What Dreams May Come
by Elissar
Summary: Cowritten with RabulaTasa. An unexpected strike from an underestimated enemy puts two Titans perilously close to eternal slumber. To sleep perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub...
1. See The Light

**What Dreams May Come**

A collaborative work by Elissar and RabulaTasa

Disclaimer: We do not now, nor have we ever- save for that one Thursday in 1965- owned the Teen Titans.

* * *

_Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens._

-Carl Jung

The alarm was just as loud and unexpected as it always was, causing Raven to jump slightly in surprise. Flashing red lights repeatedly danced across her face as she rolled her eyes and sighed. She marked her page and closed her book- a tattered, leather-bound edition of an ancient spell book written in a language long since lost to history. Rising from her comfortable position in the overstuffed armchair by the common room window, the empath dropped the aged tome onto the table beside her, the sound of its impact only faintly audible over the blaring of the alarm's siren.

As she turned and started walking towards the middle of the room, Cyborg came bounding heavily into the room and made straight for the computer terminal at the other end. A moment later the piercing siren was silent, but the flashing red lights remained active, giving the large common room an oddly ominous look, even in with the daylight pouring in on all sides.

"Does that thing really have to be so loud?" Raven asked almost casually, folding her arms as she addressed her mechanical friend. He opened his mouth to answer but just then a green hawk swooped only inches from his face and an instant later Beast Boy was standing in between them.

"Ah, don't come so close!" The metal Titan swiped at the air where his friend had just flow by.

"Sorry. Is it just me, or is the alarm louder than usual today?" The changeling squinted as he twisted his index finger around in his left ear.

"We were just talking about that—" Cyborg was again interrupted by Starfire and Robin's arrival.

They were both out of breath and flushed, and their uniforms showed signs of having been readjusted in a hurry. Raven noticed that the two were a little out of breath for no more than a 100 yard dash- virtually nothing for the Boy Wonder and a girl who could fly. Letting go of the thought, she turned back to Cyborg to find out what had triggered the alarm.

"What's the problem, Cyborg?" Robin asked, then took another large gulp of air. He moved quickly over to where the cybernetic Titan was seated, with Starfire close behind. The Titans drew in a little closer to their mechanical comrade and gave him their undivided attention.

"It looks like…" he was typing furiously on the keyboard, bringing up window after window on the large display and drawing out his pause. "It looks like Dr. Light is robbing a bank," he finished, a clear note of disappointment in his voice, and then slumped back in his chair.

"Ha, Raven, maybe we should just let you handle it; you really did a number on him last time." Beast Boy laughed at his own joke, eliciting an agitated glare from the half-demon.

"No, we all have to go. We'll take him out together." Robin said, his gaze directed at Beast Boy, but Raven gathered his words were meant for her. Her last encounter with Dr. Light, while resulting in a resounding victory, had also wreaked havoc on her mind, and she wasn't too keen on having that happen again.

"It just has to be Dr. Light, it can't be a _real_ villain, like Brother Blood or Slade, someone who can actually _fight_. No, it has to be a glorified human nightlight." Cyborg stood up from the chair and attempted to crack his neck, even though the gesture had been useless for years. Old habits can be hard to break.

"We can't underestimate him, guys," Robin responded to the complaint as the Titans made their way down the nearby stairs towards the garage. "You never know what he might have up his sleeve."

"What, a glow stick?" Cyborg gave his green friend a high-five.

"All I'm saying is," Cyborg said as he opened the door to the T-Car, "is that this is the first villain to show up in about a month, and who is it? A guy who's more likely to knock himself out on a low hanging sign than put up anything we would call a 'fight.'" Raven climbed into the backseat after Beast Boy rushed to the passenger side, as though under the delusion she was going to call 'shotgun' before him.

Robin kick-started his trademark motorcycle and pealed out of the Titan's garage, with Starfire following quickly behind in the air.

Cyborg sighed as he adjusted his review mirror. "I guess we should probably stop him before he gets away with the money." He cupped his hand over his mouth and in a deep voice bellowed: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cyborg Transit Authority. Please buckle your seatbelts and keep all hands and flippers inside the vehicle at all times throughout the duration of the ride." He finished his perfect imitation of a pilot's voice by throwing the T-Car into drive and taking off.

A few minutes later and they were almost halfway through the city, weaving in and out of the relatively light traffic with expert precision.

Despite what he knew would be a very short trip, Beast Boy felt very bored, so he turned to Raven in the backseat behind Cyborg "Hey Rae, how's your day been?" He smiled broadly at her, and then broke out into laughter an instant later.

Cyborg shook his head. If that boy wasn't a bit more careful, he was going to get himself killed.

"Beast Boy, I have told you a thousand times: Don't. Call. Me. That." She gave him an icy glare that would have stopped anyone normal person in their tracks, but then again, she wasn't dealing with any normal person. Far from it.

"I'm pretty sure that was 1342 times, actually. But then, who's counting?" He grinned madly, taken with his own brilliance. Raven's eyes flashed red and he whipped back around, the grin stricken from his face.

"Ok we're here," said Cyborg, relief evident in his tone. At least Raven wouldn't kill BB all over the upholstery.

There were scorch marks on the outside of a large brick building across the street from where the T-Car had stopped. Large glass doors in front were blown out, and the metal that made up their frame had melted into twisted forms on the ground. There was no question they were in the right place.

The R-Cycle pulled up next to the T-Car a moment later, with Starfire landing in front of both at the same time. The Titans were just about to put together an entrance plan when they heard shouting, and a voice they all recognized, getting louder.

"And to you cooperative and beautiful tellers, you are all simply _radiant_. Now I really must be off, but I hope you all found the experience _illuminating_." Dr. Light's back was too the door as he made his escape.

"That's enough bad puns for one day, Light." Robin commanded as the Titans formed around him.

"Dude, you're one to talk," Cyborg whispered, causing his leader's eye to twitch.

"Ah the Titans! Er, I mean, Ah, the Titans." Dr. Light tried to smile menacingly, but only managed some sort of grimace. He held fast to the sack with a comically large dollar sign painted on it, even as his eyes darted nervously between Raven and Robin.

"Do you really want to do this? You could just, give up you know…" Beast Boy offered, holding out his upturned hands in a shrug.

"I think not, little Titans. This time, Dr. Light is read!. Dr. Light has something new! This time, Dr. Light will be—"

"Oh god, he's talking about himself in the third person. I can't take much more of this." Raven pinched the bridge of her nose and lowered her head. The other Titans diverted their attention to their purple-haired friend, leaving Dr. Light to rant to an inattentive audience.

"You don't want to talk? Fine then! Have it your way!" He drew back his hand and threw a yellow-white ball of energy at the five teens. The Titans scattered backwards, each in a different direction.

Dr. Light ran forward, dodging starbolts, birdarangs, sonic blasts, and flying heavy objects as he stumbled around the street, firing wildly at anything that moved.

"Alright guys, let's wrap this up." Robin called over the din of fighting.

A green tiger leapt at Light, who only barely turned out of the way in time. Beast Boy was not as fortunate, as the villain managed to land a lucky shot with his own weapon. His good fortune was cut short, however, by the arrival of a low-flying telephone pole. Sweeping beneath him, it took out his legs and sent the good doctor ass over teakettle into the hard asphalt street.

Raven walked up to the groaning, face down villain. He looked up and saw her approaching, then scrambled away seemingly terrified. Somehow managing to drag himself again to his feet, Dr. Light faced her, one hand holding his bag of money and the other hanging limply at his side. Raven could hear Beast Boy getting up off the ground a few feet behind her, dusting himself off and shaking off a daze.

"Do you give up now?" she asked tiredly. Looking straight into his nervous eyes, she could see fear… but also something else. Anger and… satisfaction? She arched an eyebrow in confusion at the emotions she was detecting from the villain before her.

"Not quite." In one quick motion he brought up his unburdened arm, a glowing ball of red energy charging in his palm. Raven reacted according to years of training; throwing her arms in front of her, one palm over the other, and sending up a heavy shield of black energy to block Light and the oncoming blast.

The space around her seemed to dance and shimmer as the blast heated the air- she could see the red-hot glow of it from behind her shield, and it was becoming more clear with every passing nanosecond. The shield was breaking.

Raven poured all her remaining strength into holding the shield. Beast Boy was only a few yards behind her, she knew if it hit anywhere near them, it would likely destroy them both. She could see the cracks in the dark energy, like a window deep under the ocean, holding back the pressure of trillions of gallons of water. The shield managed to hold for almost an entire second and a half.

And to think she had written him off as Mostly Harmless.

The blast ripped through her defenses, shattering the energy and sending black shards flying in a thousand different directions before they evaporated into the air. Throwing herself to the side, she managed to escape the bulk of the attack, and the blast merely caught her left shoulder before continuing on to hit the bank behind her.

Beast Boy watched in shock as the half-demon spiraled through the air, already running towards her as she landed roughly on the sidewalk and skidded halfway into the hole created by the blast. A wave of horror washed over him as he realized the wall above her was about to collapse, and he pushed his legs even faster.

"Raven!" he cried. The thought of how amazingly fast he covered the fifteen or so yards between himself and her still body never occurred to him; the only thing echoing through his mind being his frantic mantra: _Please don't be dead. Please God, don't be dead._ He bent down to grab her, and actually had his arm around her shoulders when one of the bricks from the crumbling edifice collided with the back of his head.

The first one dazed him, and he stumbled before collapsing on top of his unconscious teammate. The second ensured that he didn't even feel the wall fall on him.

Dr. Light observed the scene before him, a smug grin of triumph slowly coming over his face. "It- it worked? It worked! Oh god… oh god it worked!" His smile vanished in an instant as a sonic blast hit him from nowhere, disintegrating the rest of his armor, a birdarang smacked into the back of his knee, forcing him to the ground, and a furious looking alien advanced on him, eyes and hands glowing bright green. "Oh crap," he muttered to himself, "it worked."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Ah it's so bright. Who turned on all the lights?_

_I just want to sleep. _

_Come on, just five more minutes._

Beast Boy's eyes flickered open, somewhat annoyed at the bright light that had disturbed his sleep. He realized he was lying on the couch in the common room, and was staring directly into the sun, hanging high outside the window.

"Ow," he moaned, "my eyes." He sat up quickly, rubbing his eyes and blinking. "My head," he groaned loudly. "Who hit me with a sledgehammer while I was out?"

"Good job, man…" Beast Boy couldn't see Cyborg when he looked quickly around the room. "You had one thing to do and you couldn't even do that right." His voice was cold and humorless- not a tone that Beast Boy at all associated with his best friend. Looking around once more, he found the metal Titan standing at entrance to the living-room.

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Beast Boy asked as he rubbed the back of his head, realizing where the headache was mostly coming from.

"Yes, I agree. You have been most useless." Starfire's voice rang out from behind him, in front of the massive television, where she seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

"Ok guys, if this is some sort of joke, I'm _really_ not getting it."

"It's no joke Garfield. Raven is _dead_ because of you." Robin appeared on the other side of the room. The three were now in a sort of triangle around him, and began slowly advancing.

"What!? Wait a second, I don't remember-" He was spinning his head around between the three of them.

"All you had to do was take the hit for her, that's it. But the one time we all actually _want_ you to get in the way, you can't do it. _You_ should be the one with their head smashed in, not her!" Beast Boy noticed Robin was holding a collapsed staff in his hand. The Titans were only a few feet away.

"You don't mean-" Cyborg grabbed a handful of his uniform at the neck, lifting him off the couch and holding him in the air with ease.

"Every. Last. Word. You had one job, you useless little turd. It was so simple, even _you_ could understand it: take the hit for someone else." Beast Boy withered under the metal Titan's piercing glare- he could tell the pure, undulated hatred in his voice was real. He could feel it even when Cyborg dropped his voice to a whisper. "We never want to see you again. Now, GET _LOST_!"

With one powerful motion Beast Boy felt himself being hurled towards one of the massive windows. He smashed through and felt the glass cutting his face and arms, ripping his already torn uniform.

He plummeted like a stone.

_The ground was coming up fast._

He thought about a hawk, and nothing happened. An eagle, nothing. A sparrow, nothing.

_The ground was coming up fast._

He thought about a mosquito, and nothing happened. In desperation, he let out a cry that was strangled by the rushing wind, and still nothing happened.

_The ground was coming up fas-_

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Cyborg, what's going on with them?" Robin's voice didn't waver as he commanded his friend to give him the information, despite the thoughts racing through his head. He squeezed Starfire's hand as much for his own benefit as hers.

"Well… they're not dead."

"This is good news then!" Starfire lit up as she wiped away tears streaming from her massive green eyes, but still held fast to Robin's hand.

"What do you mean 'they're not dead'?" Robin looked at his resident medical expert incredulously. "You're not the first doctor I've dealt with, Cyborg." He watched as his friend shifted on his feet nervously and refused to meet his eye.

"I wasn't lying, they aren't dead. But they can't exactly- well; they aren't quite the pictures of health at the moment."

"Please, I wish to know what is wrong with our friends, friend Cyborg." Starfire sniffled slightly, but hadn't succumbed to the overwhelming urge to collapse sobbing, allowing herself only a constant stream of silent tears.

"Well they've both got some pretty serious internal injuries, and more than a few broken bones. But I'm pretty sure I can handle most of those even without Raven's healing powers. But… they're both in comas I can't seem to rouse them from." His shoulders slumped and he looked somewhat despondent for a moment before recovering.

Robin put his free hand on the cybernetic Titan's shoulder, comforting a man half-again as tall as him- quite a feat. "When do you think they'll come out of it?"

Cyborg's shoulders fell once more as he turned back towards his two comatose friends.

"They may never come out of it."


	2. Nowhere To Go But Down

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Teen Titans.

_Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen._

-Pliny the Younger

* * *

Raven awoke with a splitting headache, sitting up on her bed and groaning in complaint. She felt as though someone had driven a wedge into her brain while she slept, and that persistent tapping sound in the background wasn't helping in the least. 

Tapping sound?

Oh, someone was knocking on her door.

Concluding that further sleep wasn't a possibility, the empathy reluctantly rolled out of bed and stumbled to the door. Pausing before opening the entryway, she made herself look presentable, brushing her hair out of her face and smoothing out the wrinkles in her leotard. She noticed, with no small amount of surprise, that her uniform was white again, but as she hardly had any say in the color of her outfit, she pushed it out of her mind. Satisfied with her efforts, she unlocked the door and stepped outside, running straight into a grinning Beast Boy.

"Morning, sunshine," he said, smiling from ear to ear as Raven stumbled back a step in surprise. Then, leaning forward, he casually kissed her on the forehead. Acting as if he had done the most natural thing in the world, Beast Boy stood back up and asked a shocked Raven: "feeling any better?"

Raven nodded dumbly, not trusting herself to speak.

"That's good to hear- you took quite a hit yesterday," he said. "We were all worried about you. Feeling up for breakfast?" Beast Boy extended an elbow to her.

Raven nodded silently once more, her mind still reeling. Over and over, the phrase _He kissed me!_ echoed in her head. A vague memory of Dr. Light and a red pulse buzzed in the back of her brain, but her persistent mantra easily swept it away. As it was, she barely registered taking the proffered arm, and would have completely missed the walk to the common room if Beast Boy hadn't spoken.

"You're awfully quiet this morning- are you sure you're feeling alright?" he asked. Raven snapped out of her reverie, noticing for the first time her arm linked with his. She felt a blush rising into her cheeks and surprised herself by leaning into the green boy next to her.

"I was… just thinking," she said, not knowing what else to say. The pair reached the common room door, and her blush intensified as Beast Boy gave a good-natured laugh.

"That's my Rae, always thinkin'." He flashed her a brilliant grin and hugged her arm affectionately before opening the door in front of them.

"Mornin' Rae!" shouted Cyborg from the kitchen. "I made you some of those nasty soy-waffles of yours 'n BB's." He shuddered theatrically as he put two plates of waffles on the table. "Bon appétit, you two! Ugh."

Raven went through the day in somewhat of a daze, astonished at what she was doing. Reading and leaning on Beast Boy's shoulder as he played video games, painting her fingernails and toenails with Starfire, _playing_ video games with the boys (and admitting to herself that it wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it would be), and doing all sorts of other un-Raveny things. She finally 'woke up' standing in front of her door with Beast Boy, blinking more than was normal as she realized he was bidding her goodnight.

"I'm glad you're alright, Raven. You gave us all a good scare." As he wrapped her in a hug, Raven heard him whisper quietly under his breath, "especially me."

Deciding that it was time to do one more un-Raveny thing today, she turned her head and kissed him gently on the cheek.

As soon as her lips touched his skin, she knew something had gone horribly wrong.

Beast Boy knew it too, as he stiffened and pulled back, looking around with a frightened look on his face and sniffing the air. "Raven," he said, his voiced hushed but unwavering "I smell blood."

Seconds later, the two were in front of Robin's room, where Beast Boy said the smell was coming from the strongest. Raven called Cyborg as the changeling cautiously opened the door. Seconds later, he was on the ground retching, his dinner coming up in violent heaves.

A glance into Robin's room told Raven why in an instant- there, tangled in Robin's sheets, were the Boy Wonder and his alien girlfriend. Their bodies had been mutilated- arms, legs, heads, and torsos were all over the bed, blood spilling from them and soaking into the mattress.

They were unrecognizable, they had been slaughtered like cattle; their forcibly scattered remains too coated in bright red blood to delineate to which slain hero it belonged. Raven wanted to turn away, _needed_ to turn away, but she couldn't muster the willpower to tear her eyes from the grizzly sight

Just then, Cyborg came running down the hall and broke her out of her trance, his heavy footsteps announcing his presence. "Beast Boy! Rae!" he shouted. "What's wrong?!"

Speechlessly, Raven turned to him, preparing herself to say those awful words: _Robin and Starfire are dead._ They never passed her lips. Instead, she gasped as she watched her cybernetic friend freeze mid-stride, halted by the umber energy surrounding his body, his mouth soundlessly forming words behind its cloak. Behind her, Beast Boy stopped retching and looked up at his best friend.

Tearing her eyes away from Cyborg's floating figure, Raven turned to run and tripped over the changeling behind her, hitting her head on the wall as she fell. As she hit the ground, a deafening explosion ripped through the hallway, heralding the end of her robotic teammate.

Flipping onto her back, she frantically scooted away from a stunned Beast Boy, a look of horror painted on her face.

Beast Boy unsteadily climbed to his feet, still staring at the space where his best friend _used_ to be. After a few seconds, he turned around to face Raven.

She could feel the fear radiating off of him like heat, and could see the concern in his eyes. "Raven," he whispered, "are you alright?" It wasn't fear of her, as it should have been. He was afraid _for_ her.

"Raven," he repeated, stepping towards her and reaching down to help her up. "Let's get you out of he-" he froze in place, his hand barely inches away from her shoulder. Raven scooted further away before curling into a ball, closing her eyes, and clapping her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear-

Desperate sobs wracked her body as the green boy screamed in unimaginable agony. Her hands were a poor defense against the boy's agony-filled cries. She couldn't see him, but Raven knew _exactly_ what she was doing to him- she could see it in her mind's eye, as clear as daylight.

An eternity passed before his screams were silenced. And another eternity passed before she could bring herself to open her eyes. Where Beast Boy had stood before, there was only a fine red mist covering the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and _her_. Raven looked down at her white cloak as it lay over her, stained red by the blood of Beast Boy, she tried to cry out, but only managed a strangled sort of half-breath.

A sudden thought struck her, and her mind recoiled in disgust. Horrified that she was even _capable_ of thinking such things, she didn't notice her finger slowly traveling along the blood-covered floor in front of her.

She suddenly felt like more of an observer than a participant in this living horror. Her hand moved under its own power, slowly drawing up to her face. Raven's violet eyes went out of focus as the bloody digit entered her mouth, before rolling back into her head with pleasure.

And just as suddenly, Raven came back to reality. Her eyes went wide in horror and disgust as she realized what she had in her mouth, and the world started to swirl and fade before her eyes.

But as everything was going black, Raven couldn't get one persistent, nagging thought out of her head.

Beast Boy had tasted… _good._

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starfire and Robin sat out in the common room, a heavy silence hanging in the air like a thick fog.

Unexpectedly, Robin was the first to break it. "Star? Do you think that-"

He was interrupted by the alarm going off, signaling an emergency in the city that the Titans were needed for. Dashing to the computer console, Robin read the report and groaned aloud. It was the HIVE. Reaching for his communicator, he called Cyborg.

"We've got a report of Jinx, Mammoth, and Gizmo at the downtown Art Museum," said Robin. "Can you make it?"

In the medical wing, Cyborg shook his head in frustration. _Can I make it? Of all the stupid questions…_

"No, Rob," he replied. "Someone has to stay with them at all times- these things can take a nasty turn for the worse _very_ quickly. You and Star are going to have to take care of those three yourselves."

Robin grunted in agreement and replaced the communicator in his belt. "Alright Star, looks like it's going to be just you and me. Let's take care of them as quickly as possible."

Starfire nodded in understanding before picking up her leader and flying out the window with him, headed southeast towards the museum being robbed. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief at having something else to occupy her thoughts with as they traveled; she would never have guessed that Robin was having the exact same feeling. As she climbed higher over the bay, he began discussing the plan of attack.

"They've got us outnumbered, but if we catch them by surprise we can take care of that. We're going to need one-hit knockouts to start out with, if at all possible."

Starfire frowned in thought before replying. "Very well, I shall knock out Jinx, and you may take down the Gizmo, yes?"

Robin nodded at the Tamaranean as they approached their target. "Sounds like a plan to me." He then threw her a lopsided grin, eliciting a blush in the alien girl's orange cheeks. "Once those two are down, Mammoth won't have any support, and he'll go down like a ton of bricks." They landed on the roof of the museum and waited for their prey to emerge.

Five minutes later, the three thieves exited the building from a door of Mammoth's making. The two Titans smiled grimly as they heard Gizmo's voice scratch out below them. "See? I told you I could scramble the alarm long enough to get out before those scuzz-grubbin' Titans showed up!"

Jinx opened her mouth to reply, and the heroes leapt into action.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beast Boy awoke feeling oddly… alive… for someone who had just taken a thirty story fall and landed on some especially unforgiving looking rocks. Still, he wasn't complaining- alive was certainly better than dead, and especially on such a pretty day like today. The changeling found himself lying on his back in some grass at the park. Kicking back and relaxing, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun beating down upon him. Deciding that the whole 'getting Raven killed and subsequently thrown out of the Tower' thing was just some random byproduct of his overactive imagination, he closed his eyes and started drifting back to sleep.

The warmth of the sun abruptly vanished, replaced by an enormous shadow looming large above him. Beast Boy cracked open an eye to see what was spoiling his pleasant moment.

"Bad doggie!" shouted a horribly familiar voice. "You run away from Soto! But Soto have better collar for Soto's doggie!" Beast Boy tried to roll away from the deranged alien, but before he could get out of the way he felt a metal ring snap around his neck. "Now Soto can control when doggie change!" cried his ecstatic captor as he held up a large remote-control looking device with a few comically large buttons on it.

Beast Boy reached down for his communicator and sent out a distress call just as the collar on his neck zapped him, transforming the changeling into a green dog. Picking him up, Soto carried Beast Boy into the nearby woods, sopping as they came into the clearing where Soto's spaceship was hidden. Attaching a leash to the changeling's collar, the alien tied him to one of the legs holding the vehicle off the ground.

"Stay right here, doggie- Soto has to go find doggie food for Soto's doggie!" Stomping off back towards town, the enormous alien quickly vanished from sight. As soon as he was gone, Beast Boy frantically tried to change form and escape from his entrapment, but Soto was as good as his word- while wearing the collar, the changeling couldn't change. His only hope lay in the Titans arriving before Soto was ready to leave.

Moments later, his prayers were answered as a black raven materialized in front of him, before retreating back and revealing his four friends. Barking happily, he made his presence known.

"Oh, good grief," moaned Robin. "The idiot got himself caught _again?_"

Beast Boy stopped barking.

"Robin," said Raven, with a hint of warning in her voice. Beast Boy felt his heart swell in appreciation. "That's _my_ line."

Beast Boy's heart crashed harder this time.

"Look, guys," said Cyborg. "That Soto guy is a real pain in the ass to fight, right?"

"Oh yes," agreed Starfire. "He was most annoying to deal with last time Beast Boy was apprehended."

"And, let's be honest with ourselves," continued Cyborg. "Beast Boy here isn't exactly a prime example of a proper superhero. I mean, he's pretty weak-"

"-and stupid," added Robin.

"-and clumsy," said Starfire, throwing in her two cents.

"And let's not forget how unbearably annoying he can be," muttered Raven.

"Exactly. So, why don't we take advantage of this opportunity we've got here and scram before Soto gets back? I mean, why fight Soto for _him?_"

"Sounds like a plan. Pragmatism makes things so much easier sometimes," said Robin. "Hey Cy- I'll play you in _Auto Racers 3_ when we get back."

A screech echoed through the air as the dark raven reappeared once more, then vanished- leaving behind one thoroughly crushed green dog. Moments later, the sounds of Soto's arrival made their way to Beast Boy's ears, and he found himself face-to-face with the childish alien.

"Hello, doggie! Soto brought back some doggie food for you!" He held up a gargantuan bag with a green cartoon dog on it that bore a striking resemblance to the trapped changeling. "Now we can go home to Soto's planet!"

A whimper crept out of the dog's throat as it was dragged up the ramp into the waiting spaceship, and into his new life as an idiot's pet.


	3. A Light in the Darkness

**Disclaimer**: We, or I, do not own Teen Titans.

**Author's Note**: Thanks again to all our readers. We'll try to update faster, school can get in the way.

_You are also caught with the fact that man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage._

_-_Morris West

* * *

Cyborg slowly looked over the clipboard he held in his hand. He'd read over the charts at least a hundred times, and when all the medical machines hooked up to his two friends spat out another set with updated data in a few minutes, he'd read over those a hundred times as well. 

He hated not being able to go help Robin and Starfire fight the HIVE, but BB and Raven needed him more. He hated having to stand silent watch over two of his closest friends, with full knowledge that they could die at any moment. But most of all, he hated not being able to do one damn thing about any of it.

He reached the bottom of the changeling's chart and was once again about to start back up at the top when he noticed a small box in the bottom right corner of the data-abundant page.

"REM: Present?" He blinked and then looked at the little box again. He threw the chart onto the open countertop and raced over to the green Titan's bed. Cyborg had shut off the EEG's visual monitor because the one hooked up to Beast Boy's machine flickered incessantly, and he figured his patients would do better with their doctor's sanity intact.

At this point, however, his sanity was a luxury he could afford to risk. He _had_ to see if the data was right, or if the machines needed another recalibrating. Flicking the device on, Cyborg stared intently at the series of fluctuating lines. In the middle, there were four lines that ran completely flat along the screen.

Cyborg sighed in disappointment before a flicker of movement on the screen caught his eye. Excitedly, he glued his face to the display and waited for confirmation that he wasn't just seeing things. _There! _The middle of the four lines rose almost imperceptibly, then fell an equally short distance.

The metallic Titan whirled around to check Raven's identical equipment. He watched silently for a moment, and was soon rewarded with a small blip, no bigger than Beast Boy's. He pushed the monitor on its hinged platform to the side and leaned in close to the purple-haired girl.

Her breathing was slow, rising and falling lightly, and did not disturb the peacefully pained look on the empath's face. Cyborg got closer, his own face only inches from hers, staring intently. Her eyelids wobbled slightly, her eyelashes vibrating like strings on a violin.

There was no doubt now, both of them, the actual _people_ he knew, were still both very much alive. He quickly got back to work, trying to find a way to make sure that they _stayed_ that way.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robin collapsed his staff and stowed it away in his belt. He reached out with his foot and towed over a prostrate Gizmo with his steel-tipped boot. The surprised/pain-filled look on the unconscious villain's face said it all: he never saw it coming.

He looked over to where Starfire hovered a few feet above the street. An unconscious Mammoth at her feet, and an equally lifeless Jinx a few yards away, closer to the large hole in the museum wall.

"That was even easier than I had hoped," he said, stepping over the bald bad guy towards Starfire.

"Yes, it appears that the Mammoth has, what do you say- a jaw of glass?"

"Glass jaw, " he said automatically, raising his voice to make himself heard over the approaching sirens of the ever-late police. "You know, Star, about what I was going to say earlier-"

"Guys, I've got some good news!" Cyborg's booming voice coming out of both of their communicators cut the Boy Wonder off.

"We're on our way back." Robin released the button on his communicator as Starfire was already wrapping her arms around him and launching into the air.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven held her eyes clenched shut. Suddenly the pressure around her changed. She felt wind- dry wind- and heat on her back. How had she gotten outside? She slowly eased up off of her extremely tensed-up position, and very, very cautiously, opened one eye. She was in the city, people were walking down the street, around her, not even taking notice of her presence.

Bright sunlight cascaded down from high overhead, reflecting off the countless mirrored windows of the skyscrapers lining the downtown street she stood on. She checked herself for a moment, made sure she was real by pinching her leg, and letting out an 'ouch' that no one walking around her seemed to notice; the sidewalk beneath her feet seemed authentic though. She lifted a pale hand and gingerly touched a tree imbedded in the sidewalk by the city. It felt real enough.

She looked down; her clothes were back to normal, and- thank Azar- free of blood. The wind blowing lightly at her cloak was as warm and dry as the intense sunlight. Raven couldn't help but smile- a very small smile, but a smile nonetheless. It had all obviously been some sort of horrible nightmare. It's not as though her worst fears could just suddenly come to pass.

As she looked around, hand still resting against the very real feeling tree, the backs of both hands began to burn, as though someone had just dropped hot coals onto them, and pressed the same in her palms. Instinctively her hand's clenched up. The pain vanished as quickly as it came, and she looked at her outstretched hand, slowly opening it.

It was full of… dust… no, _ash_. Just then the wind intensified, wiping it out of her open palm and revealing a burning red rune. A small cry of fear escaped her lips and she looked around frantically. In an instant the whole scene around her had vanished and had been replaced with a derelict, worn-down, rubble strewn wasteland.

She turned her head away from the street and back to the tree next to her, praying that her eyes were deceiving her, but watched helplessly as the tree withered, and it turned to ash before melting away into the fierce wind.

Her dark cloak and purple hair fluttered around her as she staggered away from the spot where it had been. Everything was destroyed; the once teeming street was in terrible disrepair. The once gleaming skyscrapers of the city showed signs of decay, their mirrored glass windows broken or missing more often than not.

A voice behind her startled her, and she spun around to face it.

"I gotta say kid, you do good work." Mumbo had his hands on his hips as he glanced appraisingly around at the ruined city.

"What are you talking about?" Raven snapped angrily. "What happened to the city?!" She stepped back into a guarded stance, her hands glowing with black energy.

"Oh come on kid, you can drop the act, I just want to know how you did it. It's a pretty impressive trick…" He shrugged his shoulders

"I didn't do _anything,_" she retorted, trying to keep her voice steady and failing, it cracked slightly as her eyes wandered to the broken down ruins surrounding her.

"Right, we both know that's _mumbo jumbo_!" The blue-faced magician raised his wand and a jet of smoke shot out. Raven raised her own hands, waiting for a blow to come from the cloud encompassing her, but it never came- she only got another voice.

"Wow, everyone's gone and the city's toast. Must be weird being the only person left in the world, huh?"

"What?!" Raven spun in the smoke and found herself face to face with Jinx as the smoke around them started to dissipate into the ever present wind.

"Well look around you little-miss-dark…you're all that's left."

"Shut up."

"I'm just sayin'-"

"**Shut up.**"

Jinx glanced around at the destroyed metropolis. "Even if all the good nightclubs had to get destroyed along with the rest of it..."

"I said _shut up_!" Raven's eyes flashed red, and Jinx was gone.

"Who on _Earth_ are you talking to, dear child?" A cold, menacing, and horribly familiar voice came from nowhere. "If you can't tell by the condition of your surroundings, the deafening silence of the city, or even those nice little marks on your hands; we are very much alone."

She turned on her feet even as a chill ran up her spine "_Slade_. And here I thought I had the pleasure of being in the absence of your company." She had recomposed herself quickly.

"You are alone, Raven. All. Alone-" Raven peered into his face with her amethyst eyes as his seemed to cut right through her.

"Then what are you?" she asked rhetorically.

He ignored her question. "-And you're scared. Scared I may be right; petrified that I _just might be_ telling the truth. You're terrified that you really _are_ all alone. It's no use trying to hide from me, Raven." He paused, and she realized she was holding a breath that she couldn't make herself release. "And you're right, I'm not really here either. This is all _you_. I suppose your subconscious, like your father, thought I'd be the most effective messenger."

Raven found her muscle control again and made herself breathe. She opened her mouth to respond but the villain had vanished. She blinked a few times then rubbed her eyes. Slade had not reappeared- she wasn't sure if she was grateful for this or not- and the city still lay in ruins before her. Slowly, she started walking down the broken-down street.

What if he wasn't lying?

No, he had to be. People don't just disappear, even if the city is in ruins, the population of the whole planet can't just suddenly up and vanish.

But there's no signs of life to be found. No people, no bodies, no… anything.

Raven called out for someone- anyone- but her voice was swallowed by the howling gusts. Ash whipped up around her, making it harder to breathe and choking her voice even further. She attempted to fly but found herself unable of even so much as hovering an inch off the ground.

So she lowered her head into the wind and started walking. Stopping every now and again to check for signs of life and to call out for others, she yelled herself hoarse even though she knew it was in vain. After what seemed like hours she reached her destination. A hill on the outskirts of town, and climbed to the top.

When she reached the crest, she allowed herself to look up. Everything before her was in ruin. Not just the city itself, but every bit of land she could see out to the far off horizon was scorched and barren.

She was alone.

She fell back onto the ground, covering her face with her hands as she sat in the thick ash of an annihilated world.

She was truly alone.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black. _Everything_ was black. Beast Boy shot a hand to his neck, there was no collar. He looked around, he wasn't on Soto's ship, he wasn't… well… _anywhere_.

The green Titan blinked his eyes a few times. Everything was still black. He raised his hand to his face, but couldn't see it, so he brought it closer, then he could clearly tell its outline as he wiggled his fingers. Ok, so at least he wasn't blind.

But that did leave some rather large, pressing questions, such as…

"Where in the _hell_ am I?" He got to his feet, scratching the back of his head in confusion. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, he realized he wasn't in a totally pitch-black area, there was a very, very dim ring of light around him. There was just enough light in the room for him to see for a few feet, but then his vision melted into unremitting blackness.

He stared down at the floor for a minute in contemplation; he couldn't tell whether there was something there or not. It was as though he was standing on extremely clear glass, but when he bent down to feel it, it didn't at all feel like glass, but cork. But when he tested it, there was no extra spring to his step, so cork seemed out of the question.

Something suddenly caught his eye off in the distance. Straining his eyes, he saw that there was a light somewhere far away from where he was now. It was just a little pinprick of light directly ahead of him, but it was more interesting than the nothingness everywhere else. "It's not like I've got anything better to do," he mused to himself, he tried to transform into a hawk, but found himself unable. He tried again with a dozen other animals, but gave up once he started trying to do single-cell organisms. "_And_ I guess I'll be walking, too." He let out a long-suffering sigh, shrugged his shoulders, and set off towards the distant light.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven removed her hands from her face and found, to her considerable surprise and discomfort, that she couldn't see anything. She blinked her eyes a few times, but still saw nothing. A horrible thought flashed across her mind; had she gone blind? No, she thought, it seemed much more likely that she was simply in an _extremely_ dark room. She waited a minute; not getting up from the patch of floor she was sitting on.

Her patience paid off. After sitting in total darkness for a little while, her violet eyes slowly began to adjust to the near total darkness surrounding her. She could only faintly see a few feet in front of her, but that was a damn sight better than absolute darkness.

She picked herself up off the floor and very cautiously crept forward. She stopped after a few steps to look around and see if anything had changed. Just then she noticed a small pinprick of light way off in the distance, no brighter than a faint star in the night sky. "Well, let's see how far down this rabbit hole goes," she mumbled to herself. She tried to teleport to her destination, but found herself unable to form her soul self. Slightly unnerved, she tried to take off, but again discovered that her powers weren't cooperating. "I suppose a little walking won't kill me," she muttered under her breath.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a few minutes of walking, the light grew noticeably larger as Beast Boy came closer and closer. Stopping when he judged he was about 20 feet from it he examined it, and determined that it was roughly the size of basketball. Then he took another step closer, and the light vanished. Frantically, he looked around in search of it in the black haze. He quickly found it again, and just as the first time he had seen it, it was no bigger than a dot and very far away from him. He groaned in frustration and began his trek anew.

The green Titan was getting more than a little irritated by this light-ball-thingy, every time he got even a little close to it, it would disappear, and reappear in a completely different place, as far as possible from where he was standing. The thing had a mind of its own. He swore loudly and started trudging off in the new direction of the light source, completely unaware of a purple-haired girl in a very similar predicament.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven growled in exasperation as the light once again vanished and reappeared far away for the fifth time in a row. Every time she got close it got away, but she couldn't help but notice that each time she approached it, she was able to get a few steps closer than before.

It was something to do alright, but the half-demon was _well_ beyond the point of annoyed, and that there was nothing she could do about it did little to soothe her frustration. She just had to get to that damn light- whatever it was- because she was sure there would be some sort of answer there to explain just what was going on.

And if there wasn't, she could at least beat the crap out of the light-thing for messing with her head.

Again and again, she kept walking towards the light. Each time, it seemed to take longer to reach it, although she knew better than to trust her own sense of time in this darkness. Raven slowed her pace as it grew larger, trying to get closer than the time before.

She was almost on top of it. Cautiously, she reached out one hand and tried to touch it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The changeling reached out his hand slowly, standing only a step away from the refrigerator-sized block of white light. Gingerly, he inched his outstretched hand towards it, and just as he was about to brush it with the tips of his fingers, it flickered and vanished.

"Oh, come on!" he shouted as he swept his hand angrily through where it had just been. His eyes bulged in surprise as he felt his hand brush against something. For an instant he saw something stand out in the darkness. He thought maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, because for a split second, he was sure he saw Raven standing right in front of him and looking just as surprised as himself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just as the light vanished, something hit Raven's hand, and for a second she thought she saw Beast Boy standing right in front of her.

"Beast Boy?" she called out. Her voice didn't even echo- the inky blackness seemed to just absorb it like a sponge. "Beast Boy!" she tried again, but still there was no response. Maybe her eyes had just been playing tricks on her after staring at that damnable light for so long.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Raven?" Beast Boy looked frantically around, trying to catch another glimpse of the empath "Raven? Raven are you there!?" There was no response; it was like the shadow around him was eating up all his words.

He took a step forward; and collided with something firm. For a split second he saw her, and just as he fell backwards onto the hard floor with a thud, she vanished.

He quickly scrambled back to his feet, shouting "Raven!" He was _sure_ he saw her this time- it wasn't just some hallucination… but why couldn't she hear him? He ran a few steps forward to where he thought he had run into her before, swinging his arms like a madman, but found nothing but empty space.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven couldn't believe what she was seeing, or, what she _had_ seen. It was real, she really did see Beast Boy. But why couldn't he hear her? Even after he just bumped into her, she saw him falling for a split second, but the he vanished again.

She ran back to where she thought it had been. Spinning around rapidly, she scanned all over for the green changeling. As she took another step forward, Raven found herself staring into the back of Beast Boy's head and stumbled backwards, her mind already expecting the image to vanish like before.

But Beast Boy was ready this time. He spun on his heels and shot out his hand faster than her eyes could follow. He grabbed tight around her wrist and jerked the empath out of her fall, bringing her back up to stand only a foot from him.

"Hey Rae," he said, a triumphant grin plastered on his face. "Long time no see." The shocked empath blinked in surprise before glowering half-heartedly at the smiling changeling.

"Don't call me Rae."


	4. Those Lyin' Eyes

**Disclaimer**: We do not now, nor ever have, owned Teen Titans.

**Authors' Note**: We apologize for the long delay, all I'm going to say is inside our minds are very scary places.

* * *

_The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven._

-John Milton

* * *

Beast Boy's mind was swimming. Slowly, things started to come back to him: the fall from the tower, Soto, the endless darkness… and Raven. She had been with him, and he hoped that when he managed to open his eyes, he might see there still. 

His head- no, not just his head, but his whole body- felt like it was floating away. He tried to sit up, but his muscles refused to do his bidding. Concentrating as hard as he could, Beast Boy tried only to wiggle his fingers, and his efforts met with success. Strangely, he realized that he couldn't feel the ground beneath them. With a jolt, his body came once more under his command, and his eyes snapped open to the realization that he really _was_ in water!

He let out a startled yelp and thrashed violently out of pure instinct. Much to his relief, he found that the water was hardly three feet deep, so he stood up and started to take in his surroundings.

The water was dark and murky, its total stillness now disturbed by the dozens of erratic waves and currents he created with his sudden motions. Wading towards the dry rocky shore, he fought his way through thick reeds that obscured his view of the shore beyond the edge of the small pond.

After a few minutes struggle with the thick mud under his feet and the uncooperative vegetation, the green Titan finally managed to drag himself ashore. He took in a startled gasp at what he saw before him: dry grass plains and periodic brush stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. A few gnarled trees spotted the landscape, their only purpose seemingly to break up the utter monotony of the grassland.

He could hardly believe it; he was back on the African plains, back on the savannah, for the first time in almost a decade and a half.

For a moment, he thought how odd it was that he should suddenly find himself in Sub-Saharan Africa, but his mind simply pushed that thought away and replaced it with a desire to explore just a little bit further.

Everything was just as he remembered it from when he was little- dry, light grass stretched out all around him, too sparse to keep his feet from kicking up clouds of dust and dirt from the land in almost perpetual drought. The shrubs were weak, stunted, and just as his recollection best served, nearly dead. Still, despite the uncanny resemblance to his childhood memories (right down to the very smell of the air!), something seemed to be… off. There was nothing else around; even in this seemingly desolate place there had always been an abundance of small animals and insects- but here, here it was different.

After a few minutes of walking he stopped under a short, gangly tree, trying to hide from the oppressive heat of the midday sun hanging over his head, under a pitiful patchwork of near washed-out shadow. There were no birds' nests in the tree's thin branches, no burrows at its roots; there were no signs of motive life _anywhere_. It was starting to give him an eerie feeling.

Just as he was about to lean on the withered tree to rest, a flicker in the distance caught his eye. He brought his hand to his brow and squinted off in the direction it was coming from. Whatever it was, Beast Boy could tell that it definitely was _not_ natural. It looked almost like someone flashing a mirror or something reflective off the sunlight at him. Maybe it was Raven. Hope and curiosity demanded that he go and investigate, and the changeling readily complied.

He started walking back, trying to keep his pace up despite the stifling heat of the sun beating down on him. He finally made it past the pond where he started, and realized he was already bone dry thanks to the heat. It seemed to take longer than it had the first time to walk this far, and he realized he was extremely thirsty as he wiped more sweat from his green forehead.

The changeling decided that he could always come back here for a drink after finding out what it was that was flickering off in the distance, if he really needed to. So he kept walking, and walking, for what seemed a very long time until he finally came close enough to see what was reflecting all the sunlight.

To his immediate disappointment, it wasn't Raven. Nor was it anyone, it was just a small, three foot tall, narrow steel pole with what looked like a complex mirror-backed circuit board about the size of a post-it note.

Beast Boy just stared at it for a moment, considering what such a peculiar object would be doing out in the middle of the Serengeti. Deciding that trying to pull it out of the ground was a good idea, he grabbed the shaft and _tugged_… and to his considerable surprise, was successful. The small post jerked out of the ground and Beast Boy found himself staring at a dark, synthetic floor where dirt and grass had previously resided. He looked back from the pole to the floor, then the floor to the pole, then took a step back, gripping the post tightly.

It was about then that he noticed the huge wall only a few yards away from him. He stared at in shocked disbelief- a moment ago there had been an endless expanse of plain and sky that ended only at the horizon. Now there was a blank wall, the same material and color as the newly changed 'ground' with a huge hole in it- at least twenty feet wide and ten feet high.

The small shimmer and reflection told him there was glass filling the void in the wall. He kept on staring, peering beyond the window in the wall. Suddenly, he jumped back, raising the post in his hands like a baseball bat.

The look of shock on his face was almost as total as that on the faces of the fifteen people looking back at him from behind the glass.

This wasn't possible! How could he be in the open country, and then suddenly find himself being gawked at from behind glass like some kind of zoo exhibit? He turned around, frantically searching for something, _anything_ to tell him he was only seeing some terrible mirage or hallucination.

He knew he should have drunk that water, he was delirious with thirst. Behind him stretched the pristine savannah, untouched, open, and definitely _not_ manmade. He looked up towards the sun, but found a massive spotlight, the heat was the very same, but the ceiling above proved to be a fabrication as well.

The green Titan took a few steps forward, the post dragging at his side as he crossed back over into the 'plains' and looked up. There, the sun was in its normal state- a fireball hanging in the deep blue sky. As he walked backwards in his own footsteps to the artificial earth, it once again became just a bright spotlight.

Beast Boy's mind was rocked by waves of panic. He turned back to the glass, where more people had gathered- they were whispering to each other, talking to each other, pointing, laughing. They were people. Regular people. They were old people and young people. They were people eating ice cream and people chewing gum. They were kids with their parents, and husbands with wives.

They had freaking _balloons_.

He stood frozen in place, not having the slightest idea what to do. A whirring noise to his left snapped him out of his trance, and another section of wall disappeared, but this time the illusion on the floor in front of it remained intact. Behind a much smaller piece of the same glass stood three stern looking men in white lab coats.

"Log November 12, Chief-Doctor Muhler reporting," the man in front of Beast Boy began. He was tall and thin, wearing thick glasses and speaking with a deep made-for-narration voice that bore just a hint of a German accent. "Subject 11-65 has discovered and destroyed one of the six holo-transmitters in the enclosure. Let it be noted that Dr. Sebastian's suggestion of locating the transmitters on the walls and ceiling of the chamber would likely have prevented the subject's discovery and the current predicament."

"Thank you," added a stout olive skinned man sporting and high-cropped haircut and a light smirk on his pudgy face. Beast Boy presumed that he was Dr. Sebastian.

"Subject 11-65," Beast Boy realized the man in the middle was now addressing him. "Take this sedative immediately, and we will not be forced to subdue you to restore the condition of this enclosure." A hole in the floor suddenly slid open and a small obsidian podium with a single, translucent blue gel pill rose through it. He stared at it as the three men stared at him… as the now huge crowd of on lookers stared at him.

Men in lab coats, tourists, kids, ice cream, _balloons?_ He really _was_ in a freaking zoo. Raising the pole over his head, Beast Boy brought it down in a swift snap and smashed the blue pill into the column. The window with the men in lab coats was only a few yards away, and he could see the surprise, and _extreme_ displeasure on their faces, especially on the one in the middle.

"That was not a good decision." The tall man in the middle said, adjusting his thick glasses in agitation.

He walked up the few yards to the glass, gave them an extremely rude gesture, and took a swing at the glass separating them.

Even though he swung as hard as he could manage, the steel poll bounced harmlessly off the clear barrier- the three men standing on the other side didn't even flinch. Beast Boy tried a few more times in disbelief and desperation.

He took a few steps back, he saw the other window was packed with faces staring at him intently, every useable inch had a pair of eyes coming out of it, all wanted to watch the show. The changeling looked around for something to help him, but anything he touched turned out to be fake, everything was a hologram.

He tried to transform, desperately hoping that he would be able to. The first thing he thought of was a rhino, and an instant later, that is what he found himself to be. He turned slowly back towards the smaller window into a empty room with the three men behind it. If rhino's were physically capable of anything even remotely close to a mischievous grin, then Beast Boy knew he was doing it.

The two men on either side of Muhler stepped nervously back; he didn't move, his expression remaining emotionless. Beast Boy charged.

The green horn of the rhino smashed into the double-thick bullet-proof Plexiglas with crushing force- just not enough to even scratch it. Beast Boy fell back to the fake earth seeing stars. Hell, he was seeing whole galaxies. He laid there for a moment, in a complete daze, barely noticing the tall man, Muhler, speaking again

"You can't win. Just take the pill and you can avoid further injury. We wish to study you, and all these nice people wish to… _gawk_ at you. Now, I wan- " Beast Boy couldn't see his face, but he was sure he was smiling with some sort of sick satisfaction. He'd try to break the glass again, but as he was trying to sit up, he wasn't even sure if he could still see straight. He looked behind him, the people at the massive window were obviously laughing, even though he couldn't at all hear them, which somehow made the act that much worse; being silently laughed at.

He noticed in the back of his mind that the guy had shut up, he wondered why, but as his vision focused in again (thank god) he saw all three men lying flat on the blue and white checkered tile floor, and a pair of pale legs and a long, navy-blue cloak standing over them.

"Raven!" He leapt to his feet and pressed himself against the glass. She did the same, their hands ending up over one another's. "You gotta get me out of here, I can't break the glass and- " he stopped when he realized she was making motions of not being able to hear him. She crouched down next to the tall German man, his glasses now askew across the top of his light blonde hair. She reemerged at Beast Boy's height a moment later, a small microphone in her hand.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven pressed the button on the small mike and spoke into it.

"Beast Boy, we don't have much time, you have to get out of there, I had to get through a lot of guards to get here, they must be sending backup."

She saw Beast Boy looked around, they both could see the large window, where a pair of guards with nightsticks and handguns had parted the large crowd of onlookers and was pointing over at them, and using their radios. She watched as he turned back and held up his open hands, saying 'I don't know how.'

Her amethyst eyes scanned the room; it was totally bare, except for a single large diameter pipe running its length, with an offshoot in the middle that pointed at the floor and a large, circular red valve.

"Beast Boy, there's a valve in here is there- " her question was cut off as she watched his eyes spring to life with an obvious idea and he darted off, towards a wall of tall reeds in the distance, disappearing through them a minute later.

She waited for him to reappear, but after about two minutes she was getting impatient. "Ugh, Beast Boy, we really don't have time to- " again she was cut off by a tapping coming from the pipe. She ran over to the valve and threw all her physical strength into turning it open. As water gushed onto the tile floor of the 12 by 12 room a green fish popped out and quickly transformed into a green Teen Titan.

"What took you so long? I thought I was going to crack my skull open ramming into that pipe." Raven bent down an helped the dazed teen to his feet.

"Come on let's get out of here." They both took off down the hallway, slamming open the door to the room and smashing through a wall of guards trying to block their path. They sprinted for all they were worth down the now super-wide hallway, darting around guards and tourists alike, making as straight a line for the doors they could see off in the distance.

After one final push of endurance, they burst through the large glass door into cold air and bright, streaming, almost blindingly _real _sunlight.

Beast Boy smiled. She had found him again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite flying at (what seemed to Robin) speeds recklessly approaching the sound barrier, he couldn't help but notice how easily Starfire came to a stop and gently… _gracefully_… set him down onto the Tower's roof. After his own legs regained their function, he ran towards the door to the stairs with the red-headed Tameranean close behind.

They raced down the stairs and through the halls of the Tower, making it to the infirmary several floors below in what Robin imagined to be record time. Cyborg had said there was good news, and as much as he didn't want to admit it, his hopes were up.

"What's the good word, Cyborg?"

The cybernetic Titan was amazed at how cool and collected the Boy Wonder was, after just being in a battle and then running several hundred yards at full speed- he wasn't even breathing heavily! 'Well,' he thought, 'there _was_ a reason he was the leader.'

"They both have REM on their charts, and on the equipment."

"This means they are alright then? They are just dreaming…" Starfire said, her hopes were far higher than Robin's.

"No Star, the REM is too light for that. It's more like they are in the deepest sleep imaginable; not quite a coma, but close to it." Cyborg frowned as the green-eyed girl's smile faltered slightly.

"More importantly, it means their brains are still active," Robin continued for the metal teen.

"Exactly. I didn't want to say anything earlier, but that was the one thing I was afraid had happened to them; they're not brain-dead."

"That is good news, but can you-" Robin's voice was cut off by the sound of the alarm's blaring sound and flashing red lights. He flipped open his communicator and studied the alert as Starfire and Cyborg did likewise.

"And _now_ it looks like Control Freak is going around raiding all the Best Buys in the city." Robin let out an exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. He and Starfire spun on their heels and headed out the door, but Robin hung back at the frame for a moment "Cy, please put on some coffee while we're out this time. Something tells me this is going to be a _long_ night."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven blinked her eyes a few times in deliberately rapid succession. She'd been here before. This was familiar, this whole… place… was familiar.

The destroyed and decaying buildings crumbling around her were familiar. The deserted, desolate streets strewn with rubble and burned-out husks of long abandoned cars were familiar. The sound of only the quick, shallow wind and her deep, methodical breathing was familiar. Even the ash, falling lightly from the sky with the same gentle silence as a midnight snow, was familiar.

But the sky. The sky this time was different. It wasn't the same sky she was used to. It was a dark, deep red, with dark gray- nearly black- clouds rolling slowly along it. She had thought the shattered city, the devastation all around her stretching out unto the ends of the Earth was an appalling sight to look on, but the dark, ominous red glow the sky now cast upon everything was almost unbearably horrible.

This couldn't be real, she kept repeating in her mind as she walked down the middle of a ruined avenue. It just couldn't. But it felt so real, smelled and looked so real. Maybe she just didn't want to believe it.

The purple-haired Titan had made the conscious decision not to fly around the city- not that she was sure she could if she even _wanted_ to at this point. No, Raven wanted to survey the devastation close up. She needed to make sure it was _real_.

While she was staring at the half-collapsed 80-Story Hyndman Building- still the tallest half-building in the city- she wasn't watching the rubble scattered on the ground beneath her feet and she soon found herself rushing face-first towards the ground due to a careless misstep.

Managing to catch herself before she smashed her nose into the ash-covered pavement, she allowed herself a second to recover before attempting to get up. And promptly whacking the back of her head against something hard hanging just over where she had fallen.

Cursing loudly at her eternal bad luck, she turned back to see what she had banged her head on. At first she thought it was a statue, thrown out of place in whatever anarchy had caused all this, but she quickly learned she was wrong. Her mouth fell open in dismay, for before her stood a perfectly rendered stone Robin.

His stance was aggressive, and he held the broken end of bo-staff in his hand. His face bore a look of bold determination, but mixed with it was a knowing look that said he knew he had no hope, but that he would keep on fighting against… it… anyway.

She backed away as quickly as she could, turning a few steps later to get the horrible sight out of her vision, and bumping into another horrific statue. Starfire was frozen in her last terrible moment, a starbolt had obviously been charging in her fist, pulled back to her waist, as her other arm was raised above her head in an attempt to shield her from something that she had obviously failed to stop.

Tears formed in the corner of her eyes and began streaming down her face. She turned again, trying to get away, but came face to face with her formerly metallic friend. His last stand stood out in stark relief against the dark red sky, his sonic cannon raised against a foe he failed to defeat.

Raven sobbed, her chest heaved as the wind violently toyed with her hair and cloak. She turned again ran, fleeing as fast as she could force her legs to carry her away from the terrible sight. Trying desperately to get away from it, she looked down at her marked hands and away from what she suddenly knew _she_ had done.

The dry, hot air tore at her lungs as she pushed herself to run, stumbling through the rubble-strewn street. Then she saw the one thing that she knew, in the back of her mind, she had really been trying to escape.

Raven fell to her knees, her anguish taking over as her body heaved while she wept. All around her the city continued to collapse and smolder, the destruction unyielding to her private grief.

"_I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I__'m__ so sorry…_"

"You have nothing to be sorry about, child," Or _almost_ private. A deep, menacing voice had sprung up out from nowhere, a hateful voice she had had the misfortune of hearing in person only a handful of times before. "Quite to the contrary, in fact. You should be pleased. You managed to destroy the entire world, succeeding where I had failed. I'm so very _proud_ of you."

Raven felt anger suddenly boil up inside her. She got to her feet, and turned to face the voice of Trigon. Before her stood her father, down from his normal fifty story height to a far more manageable seven feet.

"I **did not** do this. I would _never_ do this!" She charged up her powers, encasing a few nearby pieces of debris in black energy and hurling them at the demon leaning casually against a nearly collapsed wall.

His eyes flashed brightly red as he nimbly dodged out of the way of the debris, the rocks smashing loudly into the wall behind him. At this size, his raw power seemed to be distributed among other physical abilities.

"I'm afraid you can… and you _did_, my dear daughter."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For once, Beast Boy had nothing to say. Not that anyone was around for him to say it to anyway.

The city his friends had saved hundreds of times from super-villains, bank robbers, fires, monsters, and pick-your-poison _anythings_ was totally and unequivocally destroyed. It was devastated in a way he had only ever seen back when Trigon was in town.

Shaking himself out of his shocked amazement, he started walking down the desolate street, trying not to choke on the air thick with ash.

After a few minutes of essentially wandering aimlessly through the city streets, he caught sight of a familiar shape off in the distance, through the smoke, and snow-fall ash. It was Robin.

But as he got closer, he quickly realized something was terribly wrong. The shape wasn't moving at all, and as he approached his friend, he could finally see why. It was stone, it was a stone Robin. Just like they'd all seen before. The green Titan was too surprised to note anything other than Robin's final repose, a fighting stance.

Beast Boy wanted nothing more than to be far away from his friend's horrible last moment, but as he turned away he caught sight of two others, Cyborg and Starfire. But then he breathed a sigh of relief, he didn't see Raven. And he instantly hated himself for the thought. These were his best friends, forever turned into statues. Still, he found himself glad she wasn't among them.

He heard footsteps, and ducked behind a burned out van in the road, peering over the hood at the approaching sound.

It was Raven; and she looked like a total emotional train wreck. Beast Boy didn't hesitate to run out to her.

"Raven, you're ok! Thank God, we need to get out of he- " Beast Boy was cut off by a few huge flying pieces of debris. His reflexes kicked in quickly and he dodged them easily.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I _did_ **not**!" She yelled, sending a torn in half car hurtling towards the red-horned demon before her. Again he dodged it, moving forward some to taunt her some more.

"Look around you, little girl. Someone did all this; and it sure wasn't me."

She made another hunk of concrete levitate behind her.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Raven! What are you- " She cut off the changeling's words again by flinging another heavy chunk of rock at his head at lethal speeds.

This had been going on almost five minutes now, and Beast Boy was getting tired. He couldn't transform, and jumping all over the place trying not to get impaled or crushed was really taking it out of him.

"Please, Raven, it's _me_, Beast Boy!" he said for the hundredth time as she muttered something about Trigon. Then it clicked- she thought he was Trigon! He needed to make her see _him_, and not her father.

He was just about to consider how to go about doing that when a shotgun-blast of small hunks of rock managed to hit him square in the forehead with a rock the size of a baseball.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven inwardly cheered at the hit she scored. It had dazed her father, given her enough time for a follow-up hit with something much… bigger.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beast Boy coughed as he got to his knees, just in time to get caught right in the chest with a piece of collapsed building the size of a small car.

The changeling lay sprawled one his back in the thick ash, unable to move for a moment. With no further projectiles coming his way for a few moments, he regained some of his breath and got back on his feet...

… and was rewarded with a piece of rebar running straight through the right side of his chest and clattering to the ground behind him some yards away.

He sputtered, feeling both cold and hot at the same time. A trickle of blood left his mouth and running down his agape lips, and he barely felt his knees smash into the hard ground as he crumpled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven heard the sickening sound of the iron support bar hitting its mark with a small amount of satisfaction. _Talk about slaying your demons._

She walked, almost casually over to the sputtering red demon 20 feet away. Only, after a few steps, he wasn't red anymore; he didn't have horns anymore- he had pointy ears, and was… _green_.

"Oh God, Beast Boy!" she cried as she ran over to his side. "Oh God no, no, _no_" Shaking pale hands held his head as his eyes closed and she frantically checked- _good, h__e'__s still breathing_. Putting everything she had into her healing powers, she placed her hands over the sucking chest wound the iron bar had left.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in the Tower's medical wing, a monitor began beeping. Cyborg looked up to see which of his friends needed help- it was Beast Boy. Then the beeping got faster, going from ten beats per second, to somewhere approaching one hundred. Springing out of his seat, Cyborg dashed to the green teen's bed.

Every instrument the cybernetic doctor had hooked up to his friend was going haywire, and one by one all the little lines that said Beast Boy was still alive in mind and body started to level off. The metal Titan opened his mouth in shock. His best friend was crashing.

"Oh _shit_."


	5. All Along the Watchtower

**Authors' Note: **Computer troubles aren't our friends, but here we are, back again.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Teen Titans.

* * *

_Alright, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me- so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer._

- Homer Simpson

* * *

Raven's hands were covered in Beast Boy's blood again- this time, the _real_ Beast Boy's blood. Ignoring the pain and fatigue tearing at her concentration, she poured her power into the changeling's gaping wound, doing her very best to ignore the horrible gurgling of his labored breathing as his punctured lung filled up with blood. Slowly, the holes where the rebar had travelled through his body began to seal themselves, and the river of red flowing from the green boy's body slowed down to a trickle, before finally ceasing altogether. 

Raven leaned back onto her heels and breathed out a sigh of relief- the boy was unlikely to bleed out on the pavement of this desolate dream world, at least. He wasn't out of danger yet- there was still internal bleeding to take care of- but he was safe for the moment, and she could rest for a short time before reengaging his wounds.

Wiping beads of sweat from her brow, the sorceress leaned back over her patient and laid her hands once more upon his chest. She hadn't even begun healing his internal injuries when a terrible dizziness struck her. Toppling onto her side, she landed next to Beast Boy, and then everything flashed a brilliant and blinding white.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robin and Starfire walked exhaustedly back into the Tower. Control Freak wasn't exactly _tough_, but he was certainly _tiring_. The pair had followed the voluminous villain from one electronics store to the next, constantly fighting wave after wave of animated… _things_. The insanity had only stopped when Control Freak, passing by a hotdog stand, animated a bottle of mustard. Starfire's subsequent… subduing… of the rogue condiment had stilled the walking stereotype long enough for Robin to deliver him his own ass on a silver platter.

Thusly victorious, the two Titans tiredly trudged upwards through the Tower. They hadn't even made it halfway up when the alarm went off once again- this time, for four different incidents.

Robin let out a weary sigh. "Star, I think it's high time we called in a little back up."

Starfire nodded in agreement. "Perhaps the Titans East may come to our aid?"

"Good idea- I'll call them right now." Moments later, the pair were standing in the common room in front of the giant monitor, which had Bumblebee's smiling face upon it.

"Sure, we'll pop right on over! Steel City's been pretty quiet lately- we could use the excitement from a few of Jump City's finest nutjobs." She paused a second and looked back, "And we could probably use the exercise, the guys have been hitting the junk food a _bit_ too hard lately…"

"How long do you think it'll take for you to get here?" asked Robin. Bee's smile widened.

"Oh, I dunno… maybe-"

The sound of a trumpet rang out from behind the Boy Wonder, and he spun around to find Titans East- and Herald- standing behind him.

"I was in the neighborhood," said Herald, grinning as Bumblebee hugged his arm. "Just visitin' my pretty little Bee."

Robin raised an eyebrow behind his mask at the display of affection between the two heroes, but said nothing of it. It was their business- not his. "We've got four- as you were- _five_ alarms going off in the city. Doctor Light is hitting a power plant, Mad Mod has hypnotized everyone at the stadium into playing cricket, Adonis is just wrecking things at random on 22nd Street, Johnny Rancid is attacking the Auto Show, and… oh God… _Kitten_ is-"

"I shall deal with the Kitten," Starfire announced, cutting him off in a voice that allowed no argument.

"Heh, right. Everyone else, here are your assignments…"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beast Boy coughed and looked around. The sky was blue again, the city not in ruins- must be another dream. He glanced down at his chest and saw a small hole in his uniform where the rebar had punched through him. He certainly didn't _feel_ like he was on death's doorstep... perhaps injuries didn't persist between dreams, then? He shook his head to clear it. Theoretical mumbo-jumbo was more Raven's forte, anyways. He'd stick to zombies and gerbil commandos.

"Do you give up now?" asked a bored-sounding voice. Beast Boy spun around to see Raven standing over a shaking Doctor Light. Realization hit him like a thunderbolt, but before he could cry out a warning, a flash of red erupted from the villain's palm and struck Raven directly in the chest. She flew straight back, landing on Beast Boy and knocking him to the ground. Immediately, he felt the weight lifted off of him as his teammates rushed to her rescue.

"God, no…"

Beast Boy sat up straight, the sound of Doctor Light gloating in the background as he celebrated the… no, she couldn't be! He looked over at the half-demon, and saw just what the blast had done to her.

She _was_.

Suddenly, everything came sharply into focus. He could see the faintest wisps of smoke coming off of Raven's body. He heard the thudding heartbeats of _pack_ as they came to grips with the loss of their friend. He smelled the charred flesh of _mate_. He felt the slick wetness of _enemy_. He tasted the warm flesh of _prey_. His mind was blank. There was nothing, simply feeling, and he didn't know what was going on, and didn't care.

Beast Boy shook his head, feeling suddenly very dizzy. He sank to his knees (when had he stood up?) and closed his eyes. His hand hit something rough and cylindrical, and he held onto it not knowing what it was. In the back of his mind, he heard a whining electrical noise…it was… Cyborg's sonic cannon charging up? Something was said by someone… were they talking to him? He shook his head again, knocking loose the cobwebs clouding his mind.

"-make me do this, BB."

Puzzled, Beast Boy opened his eyes, and immediately regretted it. Doctor Light's mangled corpse was spread in front of him, and his hand was currently where the villain's abdomen _used_ to be, gripping his spine.

_It'snotrealjustadreamjustadreamnoneofitrealnotamurderernotananimalnotrealnotrealno-_

Something stung him in the neck- a tranquilizer dart- and he felt himself going under…

…before everything came sharply into focus once again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

She was embarrassed to admit it, but Raven was lost. In a city she had lived in for _years_.

"Everything looks different from the air," she justified to herself. Something was interfering with her powers- she couldn't fly, couldn't teleport, couldn't even feel out Beast Boy with her empathy… assuming he survived. Banishing that thought from her mind, she quickened her pace, before abandoning all pretense and breaking into a run.

Above the din of a city, she heard a vaguely familiar noise- half howl, half roar. It was Beast Boy, she knew, but whatever creature made that particular cry was unknown to her. Still- it sounded pained, and she pushed her legs harder to carry her towards her best guess of the sound's origin.

Minutes later, a panting Raven found herself staring down at what was left of Doctor Light, and the wrecked T-Car nearby. Pushing away the nausea induced by the villain's mangled remains; she looked around for any signs of her friends. An explosion down the street provided a handy indicator of their likely position, and she ran in that direction...

…and tripped over her own corpse.

Raven stared at her own smoking remains for a few seconds; the sheer stunning event of stumbling upon your own body doesn't exactly happen every day, but a millisecond later she was knocked from her stupor by another howling roar. Scrambling back to her feet, she dashed towards the sound- much closer than when she had last heard it.

Reaching an intersection, she turned to corner to find complete and utter chaos.

The smashed walls of countless buildings were scattered across the wreckage of burning cars and horribly cracked pavement. Those facades that had managed to remain standing all had their windows broken, with shards of glass strewn across the sidewalks, glinting from the added firelight and the intense midday sun hanging high overhead.

Standing in the middle of the apparent warzone, three tattered teenagers faced off against a _very_ angry-looking creature she had never seen before- Raven could only assume it was the Beast. It seemed as if she had arrived at a sudden lull in the fighting, as both sides were staring intently at each other, chests all rising and falling heavily. Rivulets of blood trickled down the Titans' bodies from varying minor wounds, but the Beast- though slightly winded- had barely more than ruffled fur.

As she ran towards her friends, they leapt back into the fray- shooting, blasting, kicking, clawing, biting, and generally doing their best to grievously injure one another.

That is, until she was spotted.

She had never seen Robin go slack-jawed before, and found herself wishing for a camera before remembering that only Beast Boy was actually _real_, and therefore it didn't count.

"Friend! You are alive!"

"R-Raven? What in the-"

"H-how? Doctor Light's blast-"

Ignoring the three stammering Titans, she stomped over to the shocked Beast and grabbed his ear roughly. "If you'll excuse us, I have to speak with idiot-boy here in private." Dragging him into a nearby alley, she prepared to launch into a _long_ series of questions. All thoughts of interrogation left her, however, when the hulking creature leaned down, sniffed her a few times, and _licked her cheek!_

Blinking in surprise, she absent-mindedly reached up and laid her hand on his head. "What the hell is wrong with you, Beast Boy?" she gently asked. The Beast's eyes widened, and suddenly were replaced by the changeling's human ones.

"Raven!" shouted the green boy, before leaping forward and catching the surprised empath in a bear hug. "You're not dead!"

"Not… yet…" gasped Raven. She gulped in a breath of precious oxygen as Beast Boy released her, still grinning from ear to ear. "And I'm happy to see that merely punching a hole in your chest isn't nearly enough to bring you down." He chuckled, before frowning as he remembered Doctor Light.

"Raven, I-"

"Shh..." she said, knowing what he was about to say. Surprising both of them, she reached out and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him in for a hug. "I know."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If Cyborg had more sweat glands, he would have been drenched in perspiration. As it was, he didn't, and he wasn't. The only visible sign the strain of keeping Beast Boy alive was having on him was the furrow in his brow and the slight shake in his left hand. Dashing between monitors and his friend, the resident medical expert worked tirelessly to keep Beast Boy's head above water.

Behind him, he heard a tired moan. Looking quickly over his shoulder, he saw Raven sit up, holding her hand to her forehead and wincing. "What… happened?" she asked.

Unable to spare the concentration for a detailed reply, Cyborg spit out a _very_ condensed response. "You got blasted, and a brick wall fell on you- _shit!_"

The sudden expletive got Raven's attention- she and Robin had embarked on a long and merciless campaign to eliminate swearing from the Tower, and therefore Starfire's vocabulary- and she looked over to where Cyborg was standing. Her already pallid complexion paled further as she saw him strapping down a convulsing Beast Boy. Cyborg swiftly grabbed something off of one of the shelves and stuffed it into the changeling's mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue.

"C'mon, little dude, you've got this! Don't you _dare _quit on me now!"

Raven swung her legs off the hospital bed and stood, intending to rush over and help Cyborg, but as soon she tried to put weight on her feet, her legs crumpled beneath her and she fell painfully to the cold, tiled floor.

Just as she struggled to hold herself up on the bed between the two Titans, she saw Cyborg must have gotten the situation under control.

Raven let out a sigh of relief as Beast Boy's struggling limbs calmed down, but stiffened once more as her ears registered a horrible, terrible noise.

One long, drawn out, high-pitched beep.

"Shitshitshitshit_shit_shitshit!"

Raven was inclined to agree.

* * *


	6. So it goes

**Disclaimer:** We don't own Teen Titans.

**Authors' Note:** Happy 2008 to all our readers, it is the year of the FanFic after all…

* * *

_Disaster is a natural part of my evolution. Towards tragedy and dissolution._

-Chuck Palahniuk

* * *

Raven stared in disbelief at the lifeless green Titan a few feet away from her. The shrill, continuous beep of the heart monitor tore through her consciousness like a jet engine; she could hear nothing else. Cyborg loomed over her friend's dying body, casting a shadow over the unnaturally calm expression on the changeling's face.

She didn't breathe. She didn't blink. Not a single part of her body as much as _twitched_ as she gaped at the expiring teen. Even her mind was frozen, the one solitary thought echoing through her skull being a horrified 'oh God, _no_.'

Suddenly everything snapped sharply back into focus and the world started moving. Cyborg's frantic movements on their friend resumed, her eyes blinked, her lungs inflated, and all the while the sorrowful siren continued.

She sprang to her feet, easily clearing the hospital bed as she vaulted over to the empty side of the dying changeling. Adrenaline rushed through her body, blasting away her fatigue. Cyborg peeled back one of Beast Boy's eyelids, and then the other.

"He's going into cardiac arrest!" he announced, unnecessarily. Ripping open Beast Boy's uniform from the neckline, his large hands easily shredded the stretchy Kevlar-like material. He turned around and grabbed the defibrillation paddles on the crash cart next to the bed and hit the necessary buttons. The electric capacitor began to whir loudly, building up its life-giving charge as Cyborg applied the necessary gel and rubbed the paddles together.

Raven had grabbed hold of Beast Boy's hand, but a second later Cyborg yelled "CLEAR!" and Raven instantly dropped it, leaping back just as the metal Titan hit his green compatriot with 300 volts of electricity.

Beast Boy's body jumped in the bed, but half a second later and the monitor signaled no change, the horrid beep still accompanying the flat line. Cyborg turned a knob to up the wattage, hit the charge button again, and the machine quickly whirred back to life.

"CLEAR!" He shouted, more from training than anything else, as Raven knew to pull her hands away. He zapped another 500 volts into Beast Boy, and produced a bigger convulsion, but still no pulse. He was getting desperate: _come on little buddy, come on…_

"Cyborg, what do you want me to do?" Raven asked as Cyborg flicked the switch on the defibrillator once again, a slight cracking of her voice the only thing betraying the emotions threatening to tear her apart at the seams.

"Get ready to heal him if this doesn't work!" he said, rubbing the paddles together one last time. "CLEAR!" 750 volts ran straight through the changeling. His body convulsed and bucked wildly in the bed for an instant before coming to rest flat against the bed, the monitor showing no heartbeat.

Raven didn't have to wait for Cyborg to direct her—before he could say a word she had her hands on the center of Beast Boy's chest and was focusing all her power into healing him. The soft glow that emitted from her hands rapidly increased in intensity, until it blazed like a piece of burning magnesium, casting new, intense shadows of herself and Cyborg on the well lit walls behind them.

She focused everything into restarting his heart, imagining it working again, beating once more. She felt it pump once, twice, and once again… but then stop. Another long four seconds passed, then another beat followed the last. She began to feel light-headed, pushed it out of her mind and lowered her head in concentration, her purple hair falling across her eyes and blocking the sight she didn't quite need at this point.

She could feel her power flicker and she swayed back, sliding out her feet slightly to get a more stable stance. She found her second wind and redoubled her efforts, and was quickly rewarded with another beep on the monitor… but it wasn't followed. Three seconds passed, then five. After ten, Raven tried to sense his life force and couldn't find it. She tried to feel out for his mind, but it too was gone. Twenty seconds passed. Her energy began to wane, the light flickering now and again. Twenty-five seconds. Thirty. Her power flicked more rapidly. At thirty-five, the light went out completely.

"_No…_" she whispered, staring in disbelief. "No, no, no" She snapped out of her stare and started to perform CPR. She compressed his chest again and again, with no results.

Tears were flowing freely now. She stepped back, her hands coming up to her face as her body was suddenly racked with sobs. The lights in the room started flaring up and down as some started to burst. The desks and chairs shook while glass vials and beakers had their contents boil and shatter. The steel and concrete walls started to shake and the thick, bullet proof windows rattled and began to crack.

Just as she was about to fall over backwards, crying uncontrollably, she was caught in Cyborg's wide embrace. He closed his massive arms around her small, shaking form, his hyper-advanced cybernetics allowing him to hold her as if he still had human arms.

Raven couldn't bear to look up at him, which was just as well, as she would have seen the tears streaming down from his one human eye.

"_It can't be_" she sobbed "_he can't be gone_."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beast Boy's head hurt. His chest hurt. His feet hurt. Truth be told, _everything_ hurt, right down to his fingernails, which—being keratin—he didn't know _could _hurt.

He wanted to double up into a little ball, but found he couldn't move an inch.

'What in the hell is going on?' he asked himself inside his own head, before realizing that it would actually be a _little_ frightening if he got an answer while Raven wasn't around. Raven! He was with her, just a second ago, or was it days? He couldn't be sure.

Where was he? The green Titan couldn't be sure, and listing off all the places he _wasn't_ would take way too long. He thought about it a moment and it seemed familiar…like, he was in water. He remembered waking up in water, and then being in a zoo… oh god, he prayed he wasn't in the zoo again.

No, Raven had broken him out of there. And then he was with her in loonyville. And later, after becoming the Beast, she had calmed him down. How were they zipping all over the place like this, doing crazy things in a thousand different places? 'One mysterious mystery at a time,' he chided himself. It felt similar to being in that pool of water (aside from the constant, bone crushing pain), but aside from that…

He attempted to open his eyes, but when he did (or at least, he _thought_ he did), he couldn't see anything. He tried to move again, but none of his limbs particularly felt like cooperating.

He felt a rapid pressure all over his body, but as quickly as it was there it was gone. Sudden warmth enveloped his face, and on impulse he tried to open his eyes again. For reasons he couldn't understand, it worked this time. Looking around, he saw that he was now standing upright, and all around him was an endless green field. A single park bench sat a few yards away from him, and for some reason he felt compelled to sit down on it… so he did.

As he took his seat, he took another look around, although his new position hadn't changed the look of wherever the hell he was. The endless fields of grass hadn't gone anywhere, and the whole place looked even flatter than Kansas—which Beast Boy had read somewhere on Wikipedia wasn't actually all that flat compared to other places.

Mildly afraid of where his brain was going, he turned his head back to face front. As he did, someone sat down next to him on the bench.

He snapped his head over and jumped back in surprise, thoroughly startled by the appearance of a pale man dressed in what even Beast Boy could tell was a _very_ nice pin-striped suit. His short, slick black hair was combed over to the right. He turned to teen and smiled with perfect teeth in a way that, while seemingly genuine, nevertheless sent a chill down Beast Boy's spine.

"Hello, Garfield."

"Uh, do I know you?" As he spoke a feeling tugged at Beast Boy, that he was forgetting something, that he really needed to be _somewhere else_ right now.

"No, but that's not important, you know my work-"

"You designed Monkey Madness 6!?" Beast Boy stalled as the same creepy feeling washed over him as the back of his mind was starting to yell that he had somewhere to be.

"-and I know yours, as well as what work you're _capable_ of. This whole incident was unexpected. But not at all… _unwelcome_."

"What whole 'incident' dude? What the hell are you talking about?" The thought was now sweeping over his mind, he _had _to get out of here, but he still wasn't sure why.

"You'll find out in due course. Ah, yes, I suppose since this time it was an accident of luck, I expect they'll want you back topside. Oh well, what's a few more years of life in the grand scheme of things?" He stood up and Beast Boy unthinkingly followed suit. The man was no longer looking at him, and Beast Boy followed his gaze; a plain, brown wooden door with a shiny brass knob had appeared in the middle of the endless field twenty feet away.

"Well, don't you have somewhere to be?" he asked with mock impatience… or at least it seemed like it, since Beast Boy couldn't get any sort of read on this guy at all. He stared at him for a moment as the man gestured for him to go towards the door.

Then the feeling in him grew stronger and he started walking quickly towards the door. As he turned the knob and pushed the door open, he hesitated just long enough to hear the man's parting words:

"I'll be seeing you, Beast Boy."

Beast Boy fell through blackness as he stepped into the doorway, then a millisecond later he was standing in the middle of a sidewalk in Jump City, the warm sun high overhead beating down on him. He could tell this wasn't where he needed to be, but he could also tell he was a hell of a lot closer than the endless fields.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raven couldn't believe it.

"He's not gone, how can he be gone?" she asked again, still sobbing in Cyborg's embrace, and his response again was the same.

"I know, I know."

Raven finally gained some semblance of control over herself and stepped towards the still body, which only a minute before had contained her friend, more than her friend… she angrily flicked off the sound of the still blaring heart monitor, but the solid, unmoving line remained plastered across the screen.

"Oh, Beast Boy," she whispered, dropping her head into one hand as the other lay across his exposed chest. Then she felt it: a slight tremor, imperceptible but for the particular location of her head. Her head lifted and her eyes darted to the screen; where the thin green line rose and fell slightly again and again.

"Cyborg!" She flicked the sound for the monitor back on, and was rewarded with a steady succession of evenly spaced beeps.

"How can-" the metal teen rushed over to the bedside, using his arm's built-in scanner to collect quick data for the computer. His friend was alive, and very improbably so.

_Oh thank god, _Raven thought, _he's alive._

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Come on Jerry! Let's get the hell out of here before the Titans show-" the bank robber's call to his partner was cut short when his face slammed into the ground, his knees taken out by bo-staff swung seemingly from nowhere. A few milliseconds later, the masked hero the staff was attached to came into view from the same place, just as the second thief—Jerry, as it were— came running outside, a black duffel bag full of cash in each of his hands.

Jerry stopped dead in his tracks, and seeing the look on the Titan's leader's face, instantly dropped the bags and held his hands high in the air.

"Thank you for being reasonable," Robin said as he jumped backward into the air, landing expertly on his R-Cycle a few yards away. Just as he started the engine, two police cruisers pulled up to the steps of the bank to arrest the criminals.

His communicator vibrated on his belt, and Robin thumbed a button on one of the handlebars to patch it through to his helmet.

"What's the story Bee?"

"We're taking out run-of-the-mill bad-guys left and right. You weren't kidding, it's like every crook in the city knew you guys were short. Bad timing I guess."

"Yeah, well it's not that important right now, we just have to take care of these guys as they stick their heads up, just one big game of Whack-A-Mole. No major baddies yet?" Ever since they had stopped the last batch half an hour ago, things had been quiet…relatively speaking, anyway.

"No, nothing yet." Robin wasn't sad to hear that. While actual villains usually provided a more challenging and entertaining fight, he was getting more than a little tired, and most of them were just so damn annoying; he didn't want to deal with it if he didn't have to.

"Thank God, the last thing we need right now is—" He was cut short as Starfire's voice broke in over their channel.

"I think perhaps everyone should be aware that Mumbo has started bewitching mannequins from the department store to break into every building on Gilman Boulevard. Oh, and it also appears as if he has mail-boxes chasing people around, trying to eat them." She reported in a way one would comment on yesterday's weather.

Robin sighed; he had just _had _to say something, didn't he? "Ok Star, we're on our way."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"He's fully stabilized. It looks like… well hell, he _is_ totally normal. There's nothing wrong with him again." Cyborg stated as he finally looked up from the charts and monitors and machines all hooked up to or reporting on Beast Boy in some way.

"But how…" Raven asked, staring at the still form of the green Titan.

"Deus ex Machina?" said Cyborg, grinning. For his efforts, he received a frosty glare and an irritated snort, simply par for the course with Raven. Recovering quickly, he continued. "I have no idea, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it's green. The real question, though, is why you're awake while he's not?"

The statement hit Raven like a brick; she hadn't even considered that until now… she hadn't had the chance.

"I… don't know." She looked at the ground as her mind searched for an explanation. Sitting on the empty bed next to the changeling, she thought out loud. "I remember most of what I was dreaming while I was out. It was really… odd. It was like running through my nightmares, one after another, like everything I've ever been afraid of hit me one after the other." She stopped, considering this. "Beast Boy was with me for most of those." She looked up at her metal companion.

"What?"

"You know how when you dream of someone you know, even in a vivid dream, they're pretty limited? They can't do much, can't say much. They're like a caricature of themselves, because your mind can't think for them, you just get the outside."

"Yeah, well we only get so much of someone, our dreams can't really compensate for that…"

"And that's my point; he was really Beast Boy, Cyborg. He was exactly like himself, totally independent. And half the time, when we met up in a different dream, he'd already been doing something else. Cyborg, I think we were sharing dreams."

"That doesn't make any sense though, how can that possibly happen?"

"It would be the same thing as when I connected my thoughts with Robin, only when we were dreaming. I guess it was because we both got hurt at the same time."

"Ok, so you were telepathically linked when you were both in the coma, but why dream what you did?"

"Dreams are supposed to work out problems in your subconscious; I suppose serious bodily harm made it go a little farther than that. And together, we worked them out rather than being trapped by them."

"But he's still out."

"I can try to bring him out of it." She stood up and took a few steps forward, positioning herself so she was standing directly next ho him. Placing her hand on his forehead, she closed her eyes and concentrated. She could see glass… no, _mirrors_… endless reflections of empty halls and twisted rooms. She couldn't hear his thoughts, but she could feel his emotions. They crashed into her like waves, alternating between intense fear, a twinge of anger, seemingly bottomless sorrow, and something else she couldn't quite place; a sort of hatred, but different somehow. She'd never known Beast Boy to hate anyone… but this wasn't the same as most hates she had empathetically sensed before. It was… directed inward?

Deciding that she'd felt enough, she tried to call out to him in her head. She tried three more times and couldn't sense any change. She tried to reverse the flow of emotions with positive ones, but found that wouldn't work either. She tried to grasp at him, to pull him out of his sleep, but couldn't get a hold. She couldn't bring him out of the coma. She couldn't talk to him, or comfort him, or even help him. She couldn't do anything. Except for maybe one thing. She turned to her cybernetic friend, the look on her face passive, yet somehow very fierce.

"Cyborg, I need to go back into a coma."


	7. A Whisper is as Good as a Shout

**Disclaimer: **We do not own Teen Titans, though if we did, we'd write for it more often…

**Authors' Note: **Sorry to have been gone so long, for those of you that care, life gets in the way sometimes. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

_In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.__  
__-Albert Camus-_

* * *

Cyborg Stared at Raven for a good long moment. He blinked once, then shook his head.

"You need _what_?"

"I need you to put me under, just like I was before. Once I'm out, I can try to reconnect with Beast Boy and help him out of his nightmare."

"No way, Raven. You saw what just happened to him, if it happens again, I can't help him without you; not to mention you could easily end up in the same situation." He shook his head as he spoke and walked slowly towards the resolute empath.

"_We_ didn't save him. We've got no idea why he came back, and I am not going to sit and wait for him to crash again when I can do something about it."

"But how do you know you won't get trapped just like before." Cyborg was just fishing for excuses now and he knew it. He was well aware how this argument would end, but he couldn't just give up when his friends and patient were concerned, it wasn't in him.

"I know what's happening to him now, I'll know what situation we're in, and that gives me an advantage. You know damn well I can keep my wits about me, and then I can help Beast Boy." She sighed, turned away from the metal Titan and continued "I don't like it, but there's no other way. We can't afford to wait any longer because we aren't going to get another shot at this." She was standing directly next to Beast Boy now, holding his right hand in hers, looking down at his placid features. "Cyborg, I have to do this."

"I know…I just—" He put his large hand gently on her shoulder and sighed deeply, sadly. "Get on the bed, I'll get the drugs." She was almost happy at his acquiescence, but tears still streamed slowly from the corners of her eyes. She steeled herself with new resolve and quickly lay down on the bed next to the changeling.

Cyborg moved to the other end of the medical room and opened a few drawers. He extracted a needle, and several different bottles of drugs. After a minute of careful measuring, Raven began to get impatient.

"Cyborg, we have to hurry!" She called to him exasperatedly.

"Raven, I'm the doctor here, remember? If I give you too much of this cocktail it could stop your heart, or paralyze your lungs, or fry your brain. So just hold tight, I'm almost done." He extracted another small portion of liquid from a tiny, brown glass bottle and walked over to his friend who had actually managed to wake up from the seemingly 'irreversible' coma. His training and all his reasoning told him this was going to kill her, or just about. But he had to trust that she could keep control of her mind and save BB. He knew that if anyone could do it, it'd be Raven.

"Alright, as soon as this hits you, the room's going to start spinning at a hundred miles an hour, you're going to feel the most horrible you've ever felt, and even worse when you wake up." He stuck the needle in her forearm and injected its contents.

"That's fine, we'll cross that bridge when we come to—oh." Her world swam around her at mach three. She kept trying to talk but her mind couldn't focus her thoughts coherently, she mumbled random words. The fluorescent lights burned into her eyes as Cyborg melted into an indistinguishable whirl. The colors and the light and even her own features seemed to liquefy and shift around with great speed. She felt compelled to sit up but only managed to throw her head to the side with a jerk. Suddenly, her vision and thoughts were crystal clear. She was staring straight at him. She whispered "Beast Boy" and immediately fell into total blackness.

--

Beast Boy cracked his eyes open but closed them tight an instant later. He was still here. Oh why wouldn't it end?

He staggered a few more steps, clutching at his chest. His breathing was tight and labored. The air around him was cold, and stale on his tongue. Mirrors, mirrors everywhere; all about him his own face looked back.

'_Beast Boy,_' a voice carried over the still air, passing through him, chilling him more than the frigid air ever could.

He spun around, looking for the source of the voice, "Who—'s, who's there." He stammered through chattering teeth. The mirrors seemed to move and shift around him as he stumbled forward another half-dozen steps. He fell forward, leaning against the ice-cold glass, his tired expression now evident in his reflection.

'_Beast Boy,_' the whisper was barely audible, even as it pierced into his ears and echoed across the desolate room.

"Too cold…have to," he was panting heavily, but couldn't seem to catch his breath "have to keep moving." He managed to move into a narrower hallway, and lurched forward into the next room, only to be greeted by the same scene. The walls seemed almost liquid, moving, swimming around him, then stopping. "Please, please God, a merciful end." He stammered as he moved.

'_What is a hero, exactly, Garfield?_' The voice seemed right behind him; he turned sharply, but found he was staring only into his own reflection. "What's going on?" He cried in exasperation. Anguish began a slow creep up his spine and into his heart. He lost his footing and fell to his right, hitting the wall hard, but the massive mirror remained undamaged. The light was low, but he could clearly make out his paling green skin and blue lips in the wall.

'_It can't be you, can it?_'

"**Shut up!**" He yelled, throwing his hands over his ears and pressing hard.

'_No, how can you be a hero with all that you've done, with all that you've destroyed; with all those you've hurt._'

"No, no don't…" '_No, Garfield, not you at _all' "I said _**Shut up!**_" He sank to his knees, and leaned heavily against the wall of glass. Fear suddenly sprang up as he lost what little control he was maintain over it and filled his heart. It was wrapped all around him, through him, encasing his entire body. He shook violently with it.

'_Beast Boy, you've caused so much pain and hardship for those you hold dear…'_ He held his hands tightly over his ears as he slid his back into a corner, holding his knees tight to his chest. He could still hear the voice; its cold, taunting tone slicing through him with every word, with every syllable—with every thought.

'No, no. I am a good person. I help people.' He pleaded with himself.

'…_the _suffering_ you've caused._'

'I can't. It can't. What—why?' He couldn't get his head straight, no matter what he thought of to respond, the voice was ready to destroy his argument before it even escaped his lips.

'_You're only fooling yourself, and you can't even manage to do that well._' Beast Boy tightened himself up, but the assault continued unabated. He forced his eyes open into the bitterly cold air, they swam for a moment, but he realized the walls had stopped moving; but his reflection had disappeared from the room.

'_And what of those you've killed?'_

'I never killed anyone—" he stammered to himself. He felt listless, almost unable to move other than to curl up in fear and despair. As hard as he clenched his eyes shut, he could not cease the flow of tears from them. As the voice cut through him, he felt another murmuring agreement. He searched for it, but again, the source was unseen.

'_You think your actions haven't caused death? Dozens of the men you have fought have died at your hands, you're not so naive and innocent, you just don't want to admit what you know in your heart to be true. You're not a hero; you're just another killer who lusts for the taste of blood, the thrill of a successful hunt, the __**crunch**__ of bone._' Beast Boy sobbed and curled up even tighter. The glacial walls sucked still more heat from his already overstrained body. He wept. The voice was right, he had only ever caused pain, and destruction, and death. He hated himself for it, for every last thing he had ever done. How could he have failed so miserably? '_And of course, let's not forget about Terra…_'

--

Raven awoke with a start, sprawled out on a wooden bench. It took her a moment to realize the noise and movement around her meant she was in Jump City. She sat up with a start "Beast Boy!" The purple-haired Titan got up quickly from the bench and looked around.

What she saw was Jump City on a seemingly normal winter day, it was so real, and she was amazed by knowing that it wasn't. People were bundled up for what was a rare cold snap, but otherwise, nothing was different. She needed to find Beast Boy, and needed to do it fast. She attempted to levitate a few inches off the ground, and found, much to her relief, that her powers had returned to her. She took off, darting straight up into the sky above the bustling city. The sun was pale, and already setting far off out to the sea at her back, casting its feeble light down across the imaginary city far below. The strong wind blew across her and she suddenly realized how cold she was. She drew her cloak about her and turned her attention to more pressing matters.

After shaking it off, Raven set her mind to finding Beast Boy. She began a mental scan of the city, trying to locate him. She immediately covered the whole of downtown and found nothing, so she pressed more of her power into her effort. She searched all of the surrounding area, feeling every emotion, hearing every thought of countless people; but one leapt out at her. It seemed in utter agony, it was brimming with sorrow…and cold, so cold.

She focused on it harder, and realized it was due North. She kept some semblance of a mental lock-on, and rocketed towards the area. As she drew closer, the feelings intensified and deepened. She dropped her link, but the emotion was so powerful that it washed over her anyway. Then as she advanced, it hit her all at once like a Mac Truck, as if she had flown straight into a wall; her speed dropped off, then she stopped altogether—her amethyst eyes closed and she began to plummet to the Earth.

She tumbled downwards with increasing velocity, he cloak fluttering madly in the blistering wind.

'Wake up. Wake up. **Wake up!**" She snapped her eyes open just in time to stop ten feet short of the ground.

'Focus damnit!' she yelled at herself for being distracted, even momentarily. She regained her senses and once again took off towards the powerful emotions, now shielding herself from another onslaught. "I have to get to him…before it's too late."

--

Robin glared sourly at the scene arrayed before him. There were dozens of wrecked buildings and cars, rubble lined the streets, and countless fire-hydrants had been broken from their concrete anchors, sending powerful jets of water high into the air to rain lightly on the innumerable fires that had broken out, as well as all concerned.

The Boy Wonder turned back to the blue-faced villain that he had pinned against a brick wall with the end of his staff. "Do you surrender _now_, Mumbo?" He asked tiredly, not even trying to conceal his anger at the white-haired old man. Even with all his training, his stamina was beginning to wane; the criminal magician had sent his waves of bewitched mannequins and mailboxes after the all the Titans, East and West, after they had gathered to stop him.

The fact that mannequins and mailboxes have no weak spots to exploit in a fight, and that Robin even had to have such a train of thought was really starting to annoy the Titans' leader. It had taken them quite a bit of effort, but just as they seemed about to win, Mumbo cast a single spell that repaired all his damaged pawns and threw them back into the fight with renewed vigor. Now that Robin had finally gotten his hands on the tuxedo-clad criminal, he was ready to do very, very illegal things to him.

"Yes—yes, I give up." Mumbo managed to stammer out, despite the metal pole pinning him at the neck to the wall, as his toes scratched lightly on the ground inches below his feet. Robin released him, and then snapped Mumbo's magic wand in his face, and threw the pieces away. Mumbo transformed back into a regular-looking old man and slinked away in the direction opposite of Robin's.

"Aren't you going to arrest him?" Speedy asked, looking at his spiritual twin quizzically as he rejoined the archer in the center of the havoc-wrought road.

"No, his wand's gone, he won't be a threat for a few more days at least; we'll just get him then." Robin cracked his neck and gingerly rotated his left arm, holding his shoulder. Starfire was sitting on the curb, trying to remove a piece of plastic that had melted into her hair as she burned her way through legions of clothing mannequins, while Bumble Bee and Herald sat together, holding hands, but both out of breath and looking a little worse for the ware. Mas Y Menos were sitting back to back amongst the scattered remains of their inanimate enemies, their heads down. Aqualad was standing where one of the fire-hydrants used to be, the jet of water enveloping him as he stood, an air of stoicism about him, but also as obviously tired as the rest of the super-powered teens.

The Titans were just trying to regain their strength, but it was not to be. Only a few minutes after Mumbo disappeared, a police cruiser came tearing into the scene arrived—late as always—Robin thought. A fat sergeant climbed out and ran, or what could only approximate running for him, up to the Boy Wonder.

"Robin, the—" he panted, already out of breath for only a five yard jog "the villains, all the villains in the city…they've grouped up. They..they took city hall, and now their marching down Central Avenue. There's so many of them."

Robin sighed, "Alright, we'll head right over." He turned to the other Titans, who had gathered behind him; grim faces abounded, but no one spoke a word. "Looks like we're not done yet, Titans, let's move out."

--

Cyborg glanced worriedly at his two friends, both again unconscious. Raven's vital signs suddenly dropped dramatically, and he sprang forward, but before he had even reached her, they recovered and were again normal.

"What are you guys doing in there?" He asked himself quietly. Just then his communicator beeped. He brought up his right arm, its small screen coming to life with the haggard face of his leader.

"Cyborg, looks like we're facing pretty much every villain we've already managed to beat tonight, and then some. We're going to need a whole lot of help, and soon. Have they woken up yet?"

"Um, about that…" Cyborg almost prayed, hoping Raven would hear him as he looked at the two beds 'whatever it is you're doing, I hope you can make it quick, or there might not be anywhere left to wake up in.'

* * *

A/N: Again, sorry for the long absence, the final chapter will come much quicker than our last one, I swear.


	8. The Voice of Reason

**Disclaimer:** RT and I don't own Teen Titans.

**Author's Note:** For once I haven't lied about a quick update, but I did still lie a bit, there's one last chapter after this; just how it broke down.

* * *

_You have to do it yourself, no one else will do it for you. You must work out your own salvation_

_-Charles E. Popplestone_

* * *

Raven could see the waves of emotional energy cascading from the abandoned building. It looked like an amusement park long since forgotten, overgrown and rusting. To her, the whole place was lit up like a flood lamp. She landed in front of the building which was glowing the most spectacularly and looked up at the sign above the entrance, now hanging haphazardly by only a few rusty nails.

"Hall of Mirrors, this just keeps looking better and better." She mumbled to herself as waves of energy poured off the building; tendrils of light crept into the sky like promenades off the sun—flaring up dramatically and then collapsing just as quickly inward. She shivered at the frosty conditions that had seemed to follow her to the ground. As she walked closer, she saw a puddle of rainwater frozen over on the broken, weed-strewn pavement.

The door was boarded shut, and she had to pull hard on one of the looser planks to get it to dislodge. Slipping inside, she was stunned by the drastic difference in temperature. There were ice crystals hanging in the stagnant air, and she drew her cloak tighter about her. The place was arctic She knew for certain this was where Beast Boy was, but she couldn't pinpoint him, there was far too much energy to focus on, and she feared it would overload her senses the instant she dropped her guard against it.

"Looks like I'm searching the old-fashion way."

"_What are _you_ doing here?_" A voice called out to her. She spun around, but found only her startled, shivering reflection surrounding her. The glass of the mirrors all seemed to be one continuous sheet as it moved and shifted as though it were liquid, stopping only momentarily, then quickly swirling about again into another shape. It was very disorienting, but she continued forward, trying to match the waves of emotional energy to her sense of direction.

"_Get out. You've got no right to be here._" The voice called, it seemed familiar somehow, but angrier, raspy, and…sad. She stumbled forward in the darkened halls, her hands out, groping at every mirrored surface, trying to figure out which was the next turn and which just the reflection.

She turned right and found herself at a dead end; she faced back the way she came, and down at the far end of the hallway she saw a small, crouched shape.

"Beast Boy!" She ran forward as fast as she could, but after only a half-dozen steps came colliding into the icy surface of the wall, sending her collapsing to the equally frigid concrete floor. "Mirrors, mirrors everywhere. Right, forgot that." She rubbed her forehead and stood back up. The figure was still there and she turned to the open wall on her left. The mirrors became fluid and warped all around the large room as she stepped in. Its ceiling was at least twelve feet high and from the center, she could count eleven different doorways, only one of which she could be sure was there, having just come through it.

"I have to pick one." She was thinking out loud as she spun on her heels trying to which one that was. She moved to the wall and ran along the perimeter of the near-circular room, figuring out which were real, and which were reflections. "Seven, seven doors. Shit, which one is it?" She decided there was only one way to be sure. She lowered her mental block against the emotional energy and it hit her like a tsunami. Her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor as the raw emotion coursed through her:

_I'm not good enough. I've hurt so many people. Cause them all so much pain and trouble. So cold. I can't ever redeem myself for all that I've done. So many people. Hurt them all so much. Why, why did I do it? Can't. Won't. No more pain. I've caused so much._

Raven was fighting to regain control of her thoughts as the torrent rushed over her, drowning her out of her own mind.

_Too much pain. So little time left now. So very cold. I killed her. Might as well have pulled the trigger myself. She's gone because of me, and now she's gone too. Left me. Why? Why did she leave me? I'm not good enough. I never can be. I'm not a hero. I'm so cold._

Raven beat back the tidal wave and reestablished her empathic defenses. "Beast Boy…" She gasped as she sat up from her prone position on the hard ground. She staggered to her feet and stumbled towards one of the open hallways. Hoping the information she got out of the assault was the right direction. 'He's in so much pain.' She thought, moving through the reflective halls as fast as she could manage, nothing to guide her but her subconscious. 'I have to get to him. I have to get to him.' She kept repeating in her head, focusing all her remaining strength on moving as quickly as she could.

The barrage of emotion had weakened her, almost overloaded, and her defenses were starting to feel the strain. The thoughts of sorrow and despair came in bursts, along with pain of every sort. She was getting hit by them with increasing frequency, and if she didn't find him soon, she knew she'd be overcome by his unrelenting emotions.

--

Robin looked out at the virtual army before him. Every single villain they had captured tonight had been freed when the mob of criminals had stormed the police station. Starfire stood beside him, close enough that he could hear her breathing in raged gasps. The Titans were standing in a close-packed line in the middle of Jump's largest street. Eight lanes of battlefield. Eight lanes solidly packed with villains and criminals, some armed, and the non-super powered simply relying on their massive numbers and a few improvised weapons.

Speedy was at Robin's right, an arrow fixed to the string of his drawn bow, Herald and Bee readied their weapons, while Starfire's eyes and hands glowed green with raw power. Aqualad eyed the fire hydrant on his left, a few yards up the road, while Mas Y Menos simply stood there, their hands clasped together. Seven Titans against an entire city's worth of super villains and thugs.

The villains had stopped their rampaging at the arrival of the Titans. They observed the haggard and beaten looking heroes with a small amount of trepidation, but then they remembered their odds and quickly regained their confidence. They were steeling themselves for a battle they knew they would win. Individually, none of them would have stood and fought against such a large group of the teen heroes, but together, they knew they would finally destroy them, and make the city their own. The Titan's leader tightened his grip on the metal staff in his hands, his eyes narrowing at the center of the villain line, where Cinderblock, Plasmus, Overload towered over the rest.

At once, as if on some battle signal formerly reserved for the ancient wars long ago retired to history books, the two forces cried out and charged towards one another.

As they charged, those with ranged weapons all lobbed their projectiles. The Titans aimed all their initial volleys at the few criminals with guns, putting them and their weapons out of commission before they had time to fire a shot. Arrows flew from Speedy's bow three at a time, some exploding, some freezing their targets, and others simply knocking the victim down.

Robin's own discs had much the same effect as the teens covered the twenty-five yards between the two groups. Mas Y Menos cut a line straight through the mob, throwing grown men high into the air as they sped by. Bee fired a shot at the fire hydrant Aqualad had been eying, and the water-born hero sent a solid stream of H2O into the villains, which immediately shorted out Overload, and Control Freak's remote. Starfire poured starbolts into the mass rapid-fire, concentrating on the super villains first. As she glided close to the Earth, she picked Robin up as the groups closed; careening over the wave she launched him straight into Cinderblock.

--

Cyborg wrung his hands nervously—no easy feat for a cybernetic man—as he stood over his two unconscious friends. He desperately wanted to go and fight alongside Robin, but he had to stay here in case anything went wrong.

But as the minutes wore on, he became more and more concerned. Beast Boy's vitals were shifting dramatically up and down, while Raven's began doing so in very short bursts that were quickly becoming more frequent.

He had just started to zone out in the midst of his worry, when the loud steady beep he so feared aroused him. He once again dashed over to Raven, but as soon as he got to her bedside, she stabilized and he was forced to pace the medical room floor, agitated by his inability to help.

He turned towards the coffee pot, it still had the remnants of a cup in it, and he poured it for himself. He brought it to his lips and took a sip. It was burnt from having been on the heat for so long, but he just didn't care at this point. Just as he downed the rest of the cup, his communicator beeped.

--

Beast Boy was no longer concerned with his bitter cold. He couldn't feel his feet or his hands anymore, despite his best efforts. His lips were cold, and almost frozen against his tongue. He welcomed the slow loss of feeling. Anything to get rid of his pain, anything to stop the onslaught.

He was still here, still in the corner; he couldn't get up. He couldn't get out. His thoughts raced, but he was so tired, so tired and so cold, all he could do was return into his mind, the very place he least wanted to be.

'_Beast Boy, you don't deserve anyone. You deserve death. Perhaps the world would be a better place._' The voice cut through him shrilly. It again melded into his own and he fell back into his dark malaise.

--

Raven stumbled along in the ever increasing darkness, now only dim light from an unknown source barely lit the seemingly endless hallways as she navigated them by rote. She could see Beast Boy's reflection everywhere, but each turn only brought her more mirrors, more hallways, more rooms. She felt she was making no progress, but her will compelled her forward.

Another blast of emotion struck her like a hammer and she stumbled heavily, nearly falling to the ground. She was weakening fast. But with each attack on her senses, she gained a better feeling for the direction she needed to take. With a second wind she moved faster—now nearly at a full run—down the twisting and turning halls, the mirrors solidifying less and less frequently as she ran. "Beast Boy!" she shouted the only thought running through her head.

--

The green changeling coward under the voice's renewed assault, only half-aware anymore of its existence. He felt every word it and he were saying to be true. They crushed him. The silence and the sorrow pressed down upon him like the weight of an entire world.

Out of the darkness in his head a single pinprick of light flashed, only for an instant. He heard his name, as faint as the most quietly breathed whisper. Then again, he heard it, still faint. His mind lifted out of the shadow, he once again became aware of his physical surroundings. This voice, he knew it, just like he knew the other, only this one was not tearing into him, it was lifting him.

--

Standing atop Cinderblock's shoulder was an experience Robin had had many more times than he felt was normal in the years he'd been a crime fighter. But then again, when was his life was _ever_ normal? He was brought out of his momentary musings when the concrete villain tried to swipe him away with his massive opposite hand. Robin deftly flipped over his opponents head, while he tossed an explosive disc into his eyes.

The animated building material stumbled backwards, dazed and blinded; which left him nice and open to a devastating kick with Robin's steel-soled boot to his face, which pushed him into unconsciousness as he fell backwards on top of several thugs not paying enough attention to their surroundings. The Boy Wonder turned his attention to Johnny Rancid and threw himself back into the fight.

But just as the red, green, and yellow hero neared his opponent, a seemingly unconscious man in a ski-mask reached out a hand and caught the teen's ankle, sending him sprawling onto the pavement. Rancid took advantage of his good fortune, and moved in as it was happening to finish off his foe. He had stolen a Japanese Katana from the city museum, and he raised it for the final strike before Robin would have a chance to recover.

"I've finally got you bird-boy…" he laughed.

Rancid's misfortune, however, was that someone else had seen this unfold; and Starfire used the loud mouthed criminal's tunnel vision to her own advantage as she melted the priceless relic in his hands with a blast from her eyes.

"What do you have?" She asked, her voice seeping fury. The disoriented biker tried to flee from the raging Tameranian, all thoughts of battle replaced with fear and a desire to not be bashed to pulp—he was given help at his first notion when Starfire darted forward and punched him squarely in the jaw, sending him flying more than a dozen yards back into the mass of villains.

The redhead leaned over, her hand extended.

"Thanks Star. Guess I owe you one." She beamed at him and he returned the smile as they both dove headfirst back into the fight.

--

Beast Boy struggled to open his eyes and found out they were frozen shut. He could see a shadowy figure running towards him. But his blurred vision combined with the mirrors prevented him from judging anything else about the shadow.

'_There's no one out there Beast Boy. Just us._' He heard his name called again, but this time more strongly, he tried to speak but found his throat as dry as a desert and he made no sound. The voice was desperately trying to hold him back. He tried again to speak but he couldn't form the words. The voice was stopping him at every attempt, preventing his thoughts from becoming sound.

He coughed violently, and finally his will surged up throughout his body and managed to croak out a single word: "Raven."

--

Raven kept running as fast as her bitterly cold muscles allowed her, she felt she was getting closer and she kept calling out Beast Boy's name, hoping desperately he could hear her in his mental nightmare.

Suddenly she was again struck by another burst of emotion, but it wasn't as strong as the others, there was something else in it, something like…hope. She pressed forward even harder, letting her emotions guide her as she ran.

She called out again, and to her great surprise, she received a very faint response, heard more in the wave of emotional energy than her ears. She turned another corner and at the end of another long hallway, the reflections of her friend were doubled, no, tripled up. She'd found him.


	9. The Truth Shall Set You Free

**

* * *

**

**Disclaimer:** Nine chapters and we _still_ don't own the Teen Titans

**Author's Note:** This is the final chapter; I hope you've enjoyed reading. Here you go.

* * *

_The only way to give __finality__ to the world is to give it consciousness._

_-Miguel de Unamuno-_

* * *

Beast Boy couldn't believe his eyes. He tried to stand but only managed to lose his tight grip on his knees as his arms fell open. Raven was running towards him with the most determined face he had ever seen. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on; but in the back of his mind, the other familiar voice was still hard at work.

'_She's not real, Beast Boy, you're only fooling yourself._'

As the purple-haired teen ran up to him he again croaked out her name. "Raven…are you…really here?" He gasped for air that bit cruelly into his lungs.

She realized now how badly her lungs breathing labored in the bitterly cold air, the scorching cold burning her lungs, but she ignored it as she dropped to her knees and embraced the green Titan. "Yes Beast Boy, I'm here. Really here."

Despite her own intense cold, she unclasped her cloak and wrapped it around him. "Beast Boy, we need to get out of here before we both freeze to death." The changeling could hardly make sense of what she was saying; he merely nodded his head as the world drifted in and out of focus.

"Can you stand?" She leaned in closer to him, looking directly at him, his forest green eyes were wild with pain and confusion, but they locked onto the amethyst set only inches from them and calmed.

"I—I don't know. I can try." He breathed, trying feebly to get to his feet. After two failed attempts, Raven put his arm around her shoulder, and they both lifted together, getting both freezing Titans to their feet. They took slow steps forward together, both unsteady under the weight and suffering badly from hypothermia. Raven search desperately around as they stumbled forward for something, anything with which to smash a hole in the wall, but the place was completely empty, save for the two heroes and an endless array of constantly shifting mirrors.

"Raven…what happened? One second…we were together…then everything changed…" Beast Boy gasped desperately for air as he walked.

"I'll tell you everything when we're safe. Don't talk now."

They moved on in silence for a minute, Raven trying to backtrack the way she came in, but unsure of her path.

"Raven, am I…am I a good person." His question stunned her, but her mind quickly rallied a response of sorts.

"Yes Beast Boy, you are."

"But everything I've done…" he wheezed as they staggered along together.

"You've done so much good, more than a life-time's worth."

"I can't see any of it now. All I see…all I see is the damage I've caused. It plays over and over again in my mind."

"Beast Boy, you are—"

"No, I'm not—"

"Beast Boy—"

"I can't be a—"

"Garfield, you are the bravest, kindest person I have ever known." They both staggered to a halt, Raven couldn't carry him any further, they both fell with their left shoulders against the cold glass wall.

"Raven, I have to tell you something before it's too late…Raven, I lo—" she disappeared from beneath his arm, her cloak, still around his shoulders, fluttered with a gust of wind.

'_I told you, Beast Boy…_' the green Titan suddenly found a direction to the voice that had so long tormented him, he turned his head to face it, across the narrow hallway, the image that greeted him was crystal clear, as small rays of light made the ice in the air glimmer around him, his own reflection staring back, not with the look of surprise and bewilderment he could feel on his own face, but a smirk, gloating in victory.

'…_You don't deserve her._'

--

Raven's eyes opened as she convulsed violently on the hospital bed. All she managed to say was a loud swear as she swung her eyes to her cybernetic doctor.

"What happened!?" She demanded. She eyed the needle in his hand, now empty of its contents.

"I had to bring you out—"

"I had him Cyborg. I had him, we were almost out. We were so close." Tears streamed from her eyes as she got out the words, strangled by sobs.

"Raven, I'm sorry, but Robin and Starfire, and the others are about to lose their fight. They need our help; we can't let them die out there when we can do something about it."

"What's going on?" She asked as she slowly regained her composure.

"Every villain in the city, in one place. We need to be there ten minutes ago."

Raven swung her legs off the bed and stood up. She wiped away the tears on her cheeks and stepped closer to her metal friend. She found that she still had a reserve of energy here, and felt out for Robin's thoughts. What she got wasn't good, but it was enough to locate him. A raven of black energy lifted around the two teens and they disappeared.

--

The Titans had been fought into a circle, while Starfire flew overhead, still lobbing green bombs into the seemingly endless mob. The villains never worked together, and usually competed so fiercely that they would often come to blows. The heroes were able to exploit their lack of coordination and training, and initially, they were winning the fight. But after fifteen minutes of intense fighting, they were growing even more weary, and combined with the bad-guys' shear weight of numbers, they slowly closed ranks to increase their defense before they could be individually overcome.

The villains had pressed in around the circle, they were tightly packed, but kept a few yards out of reach, and the Titans, all in need of a rest, refrained from provoking the second attack, as happy as the mass of villains to get a respite, however short.

The mob of criminals could sense their victory was at hand. They could almost taste it, it was so close. Finally, the Titans would be gone, and the city in their control. Nothing could stop them now.

"Robin, where's our backup?" Aqualand panted, clutching a slowly bleeding gash on his right side, the water from the hydrant had stopped flowing, due to either a total loss of pressure, or some enterprising criminal shutting off the source, he had resorted to hand-to-hand combat; which was better than most, but not his specialty, and it showed in his extensive wounds.

"Cyborg can only travel by his car; it will likely take him ten minutes or more to reach us this far from the tower." Starfire stated as she landed next to Robin, not a hint of remorse in her voice.

"Then it looks like we're fighting to the end here, even if he does come, it won't be enough." A battered Speedy glanced toward Robin, grin crossing his lips.

"Yeah, it looks that way." Robin said, returning the grin almost madly, he grabbed Starfire's hand and they looked at one another for a moment that seemed to last an hour. "_Ready?_" The teen super heroes, including Starfire all shouted their resolve. As he drew in another breath, black energy coursed in the middle of their circle, and two Titans appeared as it dissipated.

Robin paused a moment longer as his grin widened and he looked two his two friends, both ready for combat.

"**TITANS, GO!**"

They all dove into combat, Starfire and Robin working in tandem as they knocked back waves of enemies. Bee was providing withering amount of fire as Herald stunned them with a blast from his horn.

Cyborg was clearing out whole legions of Billy Numerous as he drained his energy into his sonic cannon. Speedy, Aqualad, and Mas Y Menos work all working off a plan they had perfected together; with the twins forcing groups of villains together, as Speedy removed them all from combat with expert marksmanship, while the teen prince used what little water was left to distract and confuse the baddies not yet caught in the trap.

Raven was using throwing everything she could pick up into the crowd, trying to pick out the much more colorfully dressed, usually super powered enemies.

After only a few short minutes of the most intense fighting the streets of Jump had ever seen, the Titans were being forced slowly back into an ever shrinking circle. Cyborg was now locked in hand-to-hand with Mammoth, while Speedy had finally run out of arrows, using his bow to block his enemies blows, and strike back.

Starfire was now fighting Plasmus on her own, as Robin engaged a revived Cinderblock only a few feet away. The Titans fought ferousicly, but were still being pressed backwards with every passing moment. It was all Raven could do to keep a shield holding Adonis at bay while still trying to hurtle heavy objects at the armor-clad criminal.

The Titans all jumped backwards at a command from Robin; they were now all back to back. The word tired no longer meant anything to them, they were beyond exhausted. They were bruised, and scraped. Things were broken and dislocated; and long and deep wounds were bleeding. They readied themselves for the final attack. For the end. The villains all paused a moment before the final plunge. Their numbers thinned by huge percentages, but still outnumbering the Titans nearly forty to one.

They didn't say anything to one another. They didn't have to, they all knew.

A cry all at once emitted from every Titan, each almost inhumanly loud, and terrifying. The villains responded and dove in for the kill.

Impossibly, things began to slow, coming to an almost complete halt. Raven looked around, she was the only one still moving at a normal speed. It was like everyone else was on pause. She looked at all her friends, the grim resolve in all their eyes; their expressions blazing with fury. One by one the common criminals began to disappear, while the super villains remained, but were all being quickly encased in what appeared to be power-appropriate restraints or cells.

Her first thought was an explicit question of how, but her immediate response was simpler.

"Oh thank god." She breathed.

There was laughter behind her and it sent a chill up from the base of her spine She spun to face it, and was met with a tall man in a nice pin-stripe suit, as pale as she was, his jet-black hair slicked over to the right. "No, no," he laughed again "on that you're quite wrong."

"I take it you did this?" Raven collected herself quickly and turned a skeptical eye on the unknown man.

"Yes, you'll find all the criminals have been safely returned to their cells, with all the bars and walls repaired, and as you can see, the rest here are neutralized as well."

"Why did you help us?" This man was starting to get to her, not because his energy or emotions were strong, but because he had none. It was like nothing was where he was standing. She couldn't even feel Speedy, who was standing only a few feet behind the man. He was a black hole.

"Well, you did help me a couple years ago. I don't enjoy being indebted to people; but I dislike competition even less."

"What do you mean?" Raven was guarding herself now, but she got the strong feeling it wouldn't help her even if she needed.

"This world is mine, and I don't like intruders. So consider all of _this_" he swept his left hand in front of him as he looked around and then focused back on the unfrozen Titan "a payment, for 'services rendered'." He disappeared and Raven found the world moving again. The other Titans all stopped in their tracks after a single step, this time in shock.

"What just happened?" Cyborg asked, as he turned towards the group when they all realized the threat was gone.

"Where is friend Raven?" Starfire asked, noticing the purple-haired teen's absence.

"Beast Boy!" Cyborg cried, hating himself for having forgotten his friend's plight during the pitched battle. "Starfire, I need to get back to him, do you think you can fly me?"

"I am very weak at this moment, however I can attempt it."

"There's no need." Herald said as Starfire began to tug on Cyborg's arm. They all looked over as he blew on his horn and produced a glowing portal.

Raven flew as fast as she could. She no longer had the energy to teleport, so she poured all her concentration into flying towards the tower. 'I should never have left him.' 'I didn't have a choice.' 'But I should have refused, and stayed.' 'No, who knows what would have happened, everyone else might have died.' 'I'll never forgive myself if...'

She came to a screeching halt in front of the common room window, and without a moment's hesitation, she obliterated it and flew inside. The raced down the hall and landed in front of the medical bay's swinging doors. She stepped inside and saw that everyone was standing around a bed.

'How did…or, right, Herald can control portals, I should have remembered.' Then she realized that they were simply standing over Beast Boy's bed, all of them trying not to look at her as she entered, save Robin.

"Raven, he…he must of died some time during the fight." Raven knew the words before her leader spoke them, but they hit her harder all the same. It wasn't just a fear now. It was reality. Her vision brightened intensely and blurred. She no longer felt connected to her body as she walked over to where everyone was gathered:

Around a teen hero, his shirt splayed open from medical attention, his lips growing darker, his chest failing to rise with breath.

Raven felt herself kneel on the bed, which had been lowered to a normal height when she had desperately tried to heal him. 'Heal him. Heal him!' She screamed inside her head, and she threw her hands over his chest and dumped energy into him.

Cyborg put his hand on her shoulder "Raven—" she shook it off and continued, expending every drop of energy she could find within her body. It was like a nightmare she couldn't wake up from; worse than the one's before, worse than all her other fears. She wished she could just undo the last hour, back to before she had first woken up.

"Raven, he's gone." She shook her head at this, tears flowing freely from her eyes. He power failed and she fell on the bed beside him, one hand still on his chest; he was cold. 'oh god he's cold.'

"Beast Boy," she cried, as sobs racked her body. "Beast Boy wake up." She was cradling his head in her lap.

The other Titans didn't know what to do but watch. The room began to shake.

"Beast Boy, damnit. Wake up." '_Wake up_' Her world was collapsing around her and he wouldn't wake up.

"Beast Boy…please wake up." Objects not bolted down began to swirl and twist around the room. The lights overhead dimmed and brightened rapidly. '_Wake up._'

"We saved the city," she sobbed

'_so you can't die now_.'

"Garfield, I'm begging you…please wake up." '_Please wake up._' Her world was collapsing. It was collapsing because of him, because he was dead. '_Raven, please wake up_.'

"Wake up."

'_God please wake up._'

"I can't—"

'—_live without you._'

"So please—"

'—_please wake up._'

Raven's eyes shot open, and she found herself staring into Beast Boy's, tears streaming down from their corners. They were both extremely shocked, and exclaimed simultaneously "You're alive!"

Raven leaned up and threw her hand around to the back of Beast Boy's head and kissed him.

Beast Boy was surprised, but returned the kiss without a moment's hesitation.

The eight other Titans, haggard and wounded from the fight for the city stood silent. Their expressions went from somber to mystified to astonished in a matter of a few seconds. After a few long moments, someone coughed loudly. The two teens regretfully broke their kiss.

"Raven,"

"Garfield?"

"I love you."

"I know." She leaned up and kissed him again.

* * *


End file.
